For 50 years, Exchange Act Rule 15c2-11 (the "Rule") was understood to apply only to equity securities. The SEC then issued a surprising and seemingly impractical (albeit literal) interpretation of the Rule saying that it now also considered it applicable to fixed-income securities. Having caused a good deal of consternation in the market, from all parties – sell side, buy side, issuers and investors – the SEC then issued a , and a further delaying order, and now the SEC issues a partial…

It is hard to know what to do with advice that banks should create "heat maps" and "climate risk dashboards" when the inputs cannot be quantified and are not agreed upon. Perhaps another way of approaching the issue is to say that banks must manage certain political risk. That is, the risk of laws and regulations changing to promote or disfavor certain industries, whether the industry is energy products or housing or pharmaceuticals.  

There is also the issue of how this guidance…

It is possible to take an alternative view on both the recordkeeping issue and the crypto issue, even accepting that in both cases there are violations of law.

As to recordkeeping, there are instances where the technology for communications ran ahead of the technology for recordkeeping. While firms were deservedly sanctioned for the violations, the penalties seemed disproportionate to those violations.

As to the crypto space, there is no doubt significant amounts of fraud and…

Director Grewal is certainly correct that trust in established institutions is on the decline. According to the , public trust in the U.S. government is the lowest in 70 years with just one percent trusting the government to do what is right just about always and only 15 percent saying that they trust the government most of the time.  

Against that background of mistrust of the government, the SEC Director admonishments against financial market participants seems…