The concept of "disparate impact" removes the relationship between principles of morality and the laws against discrimination because it makes illegal conduct that is not only not malevolent, it is not intentional. If conduct causing disparate impact is to be illegal without any intent, it should follow, at a minimum, that there is some publicly-announced standard of equal results that lenders must meet.  In the absence of either a lender's bad intent, or an announced standard that a…

Chair Atkins raises important concerns about the risks that come with regulators collecting massive amounts of personal and financial information. The Consolidated Audit Trail, for example, may be of value to U.S. regulators, but perhaps it is of more value to bad actors, who could be unconstrained as to its use. Further, why does it make sense to put FINRA in the position of defending this information against every hacker in the world; it is not a task for which FINRA should be made…

The voting advice that proxy advisors give has significant economic consequences, and, in many respects, significant political consequences (e.g., on issues related to climate change.)  

In light of the significance of their advice, it is thus notable that a very significant action that prior SEC Chair Gensler took with respect to proxy advisory firms was to undo recently adopted regulation of such firms (see, e.g., ) - an action he initiated for which he gave…

This is a big deal. If tokenized securities are completely fungible with securities in traditional formats for settlement purposes, then the National Market System is very close to going full blockchain. Does this mean the markets move, sooner than expected, to same day settlement, or does it become an optional election?

It is interesting that the SEC's choice to grant DTC this permission by no-action letter rather than with a rulemaking - that shows how fast everything is moving.…