FDIC board member Thomas Hoenig delivered a speech ("Financial Stability Through Properly Aligned Incentives") before the Exchequer Club in Washington, D.C., arguing that commercial banks should once again be prohibited from engaging in higher risk activities such as investment banking. Hoenig's speech cites the period Glass-Steagall was in effect as having been a "period of relative stability . . . and strong growth of the economy," and goes on to state that the repeal of Glass-Steagall changed the incentive structure in banking and finance to encourage greater risk-taking and leverage within

The witnesses will be: Mr. David Lauer, Market Structure and High-Frequency Trading Consultant, Better Markets; Mr. Andrew Brooks, Head of U.S. Equity Trading, T. Rowe Price; Mr. Chris Concannon, Partner and Executive Vice President, Virtu Financial, LLC; and Mr. Larry Tabb, Founder and CEO, TABB Group. Thursday, September 20, 201210:00 AM - 12:00 PM538 Dirksen Senate Office Building View notice in full here(links externally to U.S. Senate Banking Committee website). See also: Yesterday's news item as to the Chicago Fed Study on electronic trading.

SIFMA has released this comment letter to the MSRB on draft amendments to Rule G-37 ("Political Contributions and Prohibitions on Municipal Securities Business"). The draft amendments require an increase in the type of information publicly disclosed regarding contributions to bond-ballot campaigns. (This requirement would affect broker-dealers and municipal securities dealers.) This letter notes that while SIMFA was supportive of the MSRB’s initial disclosure regime for bond-ballot campaign contributions, it has concerns regarding the following aspects of the proposed amendments: Revision of

The NFA will be hosting a webinar on September 20, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. eastern, during which NFA staff will describe the registration process and outline the regulatory requirements applicable to new swap FCMs, IBs, CPOs and CTAs.

The Depository Trust Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and SWIFT announced that their CICI Utility web portal has registered and certified more than 1,100 legal entities since August 21 (the date it went live). CICI Utility was jointly established to provide legal entity identifiers, which can be used by the financial industry to satisfy CFTC reporting requirements. At some point after October 12, the CFTC will begin mandating the use of CFTC Interim Compliant Identifiers (CICIs) for trading in OTC credit and interest rate derivatives. This requirement will apply to swap asset classes after mid