(or something like that).

The requirement to report information in such significant detail as to securities lending will make for a huge change in the market.

The proposing release asserts that the transparency requirements will serve to drive down the costs of short selling. It is also reasonable to ask whether the requirements of the rule will drive more smaller lenders and market participants away from the activity as the requirements impose another significant technology cost.

One aspect of the rule…

Frequently, financial regulators describe their rule amendments as "modernizing" or "reforming" existing rules without regard to the actual substance of the rule amendment. Here, there is a truly modernizing rule amendment.

While for broker-dealers the rule amendments are liberalizing in doing away with the third-party access requirement and providing an alternative to WORM, the requirements of the proposal would be new to nonbank SBSDs, which were not subject to either of those…

The near-immediate proposed reversal of an SEC rule change adopted by the SEC under the prior administration is reflective of the increased politicization of financial regulation. It is likely that this trend will continue as financial rulemaking becomes more motivated by issues that are outside of the traditional concerns of financial regulation; e.g., ESG issues. Should there be a change in administration that takes a different view on these non-financial issues, it would seem entirely…