It seems implicit in Commissioner Peirce's remarks that the SEC would do better if it could mandate that exchanges allow non-affiliated service providers to compete on equal terms, rather than setting the prices charged by affiliated service providers.

The economic rationale for imposing onerous position limits on physical commodities, particularly energy, has long been open to question, even in ordinary times. See, e.g., .

That said, it is difficult to imagine a time when there would be less of a need to adopt a position limit regulation that would be expensive to implement and produce a general drag on market participants, as advocated by the dissenters. Is there any remote realistic scenario in which bad guys on Wall Street…

The Vice-Chair's statement follows closely on a which likewise concluded that the economy would have suffered far greater damage were it not for intervention by the Federal Reserve.

Commissioner Lee argues that the problem of issuers moving away from public markets to raise funds is not due to too much regulation in the public markets, but that it is too easy to raise money privately. In short, if you lead a horse to water and it won't drink, just don't let it have any water, and eventually, it will.

Perhaps shutting down alternative sources of liquidity is a workable strategy for revitalizing the public markets. However, it is notable that both of Ms. Lee's…