In addition to any legal uncertainty regarding whether personal device communications were required to be kept, the practical reality was that the communications technology advanced ahead of the recordkeeping technology.  Firms did not have the technology to maintain the communications and it is not practical to require that firms abstain from using a communications technology that has become common place and is used by the firm's clients.  

Whatever one concludes as to…

Forty-one AGs agreeing on something tells you that the issue is not one of political partisanship. The question on the scope of prediction contracts - whether  regulated by the CFTC (or perhaps the SEC) or by the States - is better settled by Congress than by the Courts. Of course, that assumes Congress is able to reach some agreement.

That said, election contracts should be permissible and regulated by the CFTC. National elections are clearly events of national economic…

Chair Selig's proposals to roll back some of the Dodd-Frank provisions regulating derivatives would be a good first step, with more to come. He may want to consider rolling back the registration requirement for "major swap participants," a provision to which no entity is subject and never will be because it would make no sense to subject large end-users (for example, pension plans) to the same requirements that would be applicable to a swap dealer.  

Somewhat more…

To Commissioner Uyeda's four areas for action, there should be a fifth: changing the rules governing the production of investment research. After the research scandals of the dot.com era, the SEC and other regulators treated the production of investment research as if it were a public utility, as to which the producers of the product were not entitled to make a profit or to have any control over the uses/distribution of the product.  

That approach to the regulation of…