For many years, the SEC seems to have marketed itself as an agency whose primary purpose was the collection of fines (or sometimes the imposition of fines that could not be collected). A change in focus from fine imposition to going after investor injury is all to the good.

FINRA should also take note of the change in approach. Over the past year, the fines, and penalties FINRA imposed on registered representatives for injuring their clients have been disproportionately low compared…

Under the prior administration, the SEC collected massive amounts of fines in regard to recordkeeping violations (that were really violations and were really deserving of fines), but that were wholly disproportionate to the wrongdoing. And the agency boosted its numbers by bring cases against crypto firms without any regard to analyzing whether the relevant assets actually were "securities," and without any thought of developing a reasonable regulatory system for crypto. 

The SEC…

There is a worrisome element in the steady trend towards index investing. It means that financial investment decisions are largely made by following the trends rather than doing securities research. While the SEC has taken steps to lessen the burdens on the production of research, it should consider if there are ways it can actually go further to encourage (make profitable) the production of useful research.

Commissioner Atkins is right that subjecting large nonbanks to regulation as if they were banks makes not the least bit of sense as a regulatory measure. Banking regulation is intended to be applied to banks. Applying it to nonbanks is a nonsensical measure that was adopted by Congress, in haste, as part of Dodd-Frank without any consideration of how exactly this might work in practice.