The significantly diminished number of intermediaries in the futures market, to which Chair Behnam briefly refers, is almost certainly one of the foreseeable results of Dodd-Frank. Greatly increased costs of regulation drove many of the midsized FCMs out of the clearing business with negative impact on the smaller clients that those firms served. This is a cost that the regulators should be mindful of, particularly securities regulators, who are now embarked on a rulemaking campaign that…

The SEC has been lately on cybersecurity. Given that focus, the proposal to mandate central clearing of U.S. Treasuries to a single central counterparty seems a tremendous risk. A cyberattack on the FICC would bring a stop not only to the market in U.S. Treasuries (as if that is not enough), but numerous other markets that depend on the movement of Treasuries to move collateral, and money market mutual funds (and no doubt the list of horribles could go on for quite some length). If one is…

This is pretty direct language from an SEC Commissioner. These criticisms, which are largely consistent with those of Commissioner Peirce, should give the government pause. 

This is another case in which the regulators brought charges against a firm for failing to do a locate where the broker-dealer was executing a "riskless principal" transaction; i.e., buying a security from a customer and then selling it to a third party.  See also .

There is simply no logic to this, regardless of how the SEC defines the term "riskless principal." There is only one share of stock needed in the two transactions; the share that the customer sells to the broker…