Notwithstanding Mr. Fleming's arguments that the market would disfavor mandatory arbitration clauses, it seems quite plausible that the reverse would be true. In any case, academics can see how the stock markets react to the adoption of such provisions by individual companies. The hard question, then, becomes whether there is any public policy reason to disfavor such clauses even if securities holders as a group prefer them.

Regulators cooperating with each other to better understand markets and products and to prepare for change is a far better approach than fighting over jurisdiction or shutting down change.

Query: Is there any coordination between the FTC and the CFPB, or with other regulatory agencies, as to who goes after which bad guys, whether it is payday lenders or credit reporting companies?

Mr. Behnam is right, of course, in predicting that something bad will eventually happen. More difficult is predicting what specific bad thing might happen and proposing rules that are reasonably tailored to prevent or deal with it. The alternative is to propose rules that don't prevent problems, to have problems in spite of those ineffectual rules, and then to "find" that government wasn't "tough enough" and so to adopt more expensive and futile rules. Put differently, the question is not,…