Part of the SEC's boast, in the first paragraph of its press release, is that it obtained $8.2 billion in financial remedies, "the highest amount in SEC history." While it noted (in the second paragraph) that 56 percent of that amount was in connection with an enforcement action against Terraform Labs, a fraudulent purveyor of a cryptocurrency, the agency did not mention, as has been reported by  and others, that "[t]he SEC will collect little, if anything, on that settlement amount,…

Any investment adviser reading this and seeing that a $600 million dollar fraud through misallocation went unobserved should take the opportunity to review its own procedures for trade allocation. If the allegations prove true, that is a rather frightening breakdown in compliance procedures.  

The SEC previously  that Chair Gary Gensler will step down from the SEC effective at 12:00 pm on January 20, 2025. (See .)

Commissioner Lizárraga's resignation means that there will be a Republican majority at the SEC from the first day of the new President's term. Accordingly, the SEC can get right to work on rulemaking, or potentially rule repeals, without being caught in a 2-2 stalemate.  

The first indication that the SEC, under Chair Gensler, was to take an extremely expansive regulatory position (about most everything) was the SEC's declaration that SEA Rule 15c2-11 would apply to debt securities.

For over fifty years the Rule—adopted in 1971—had been only applied to equities. When issuing the new guidance, the SEC gave no consideration to the differences between the equity markets and the debt markets. The SEC largely ignored protestations from issuers,…