Though well intentioned, the ban on hypothetical past-performance information is not a good rule. After all, the first question one might ask when considering buying a fund whose performance is intended to track an index is: how would that index have performed in the past?

That said, FINRA's concern is legitimate. An author of the index may have back-tested 1,000 different model indices and then picked the one that back-tested the best. It is likely that the law of…

It's a great thing when we have regulators who are thoughtful about the exercise of regulatory power, and are willing to weigh in a public forum the benefits and detriments of the use of that power. (I look forward, even if it requires quite a long look forward, to seeing her on late night television talk shows.) 

Senator Warren's concerns as to the percentage of bank merger applications that are approved totally misses the point, at least if the point is good financial regulation. If the regulators are (i) transparent as to what the standards are and (ii) consistent in the application of those standards, then it follows that a very high percentage of applications will be approved. Market participants know what the rules are. Conversely, if the regulators are opaque as to the…

The CFPB's payday lending requirements seem intended as much to prevent payday lending by imposing regulations that are impractical to follow.  The policy question is whether this effective prohibition is good for those who actually need to borrow money or whether government's protective or prohibitive policies hurt those whom it purports to help. This is not an easy question, but query whether the CFPB really tried to answer it before it adopted its anti-payday lending rules.…