Although the paper is written in a very measured tone, it is highly critical of Dodd-Frank's mandatory clearing requirements both in terms of the manner in which the requirements were adopted and in terms of the result of the requirements. As to the former, the author notes that "it has never been clearly articulated [why there] is a need for mandatory client clearing." As to results, the author points out that the end result of the mandatory clearing requirement has been to substantially…

There is an unavoidable conflict between investor protection and capital formation. The conflict is particularly acute in the case of small issuers for whom the costs of a public securities offering may be impractical. (See e.g., .)

Rules such as Regulation Best Interest make it riskier for broker-dealers to promote securities issued by start-up ventures to retail investors. (See e.g., .) This may be a good time for the SEC to consider whether it has drawn the line in the right place…

It seems curious that the CFTC is moving towards the establishment of position limits just after the utter collapse of the energy market. The last few months have shown that the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran can't control energy prices. Does the CFTC really believe there is some wealthy wizard behind the curtain who can corner the energy market? For that to happen, the wizard had better have a wallet thicker than that of any government, and use the Grand Canyon for storage…

While the topic of the Order is largely the governance procedures under which any new data plan will be operated, the real subject of the Order is how much data will cost, who is able to decide that cost, who bears the cost and who receives the revenue. There is probably no more politically complicated issue the SEC faces than how to regulate market data. There is simply no "right" answer to the question of how much data should be free to public investors, nor as to what data the exchanges…