Both Chair Clayton and Commissioner Piwowar are sending a strong message that the SEC will be making a (welcome) return to its historical (and appropriate) focus on capital raising, corporate disclosures, investor protections and market structure. Politically motivated rulemakings will take a (hopefully) lower priority.

The most significant controversies created by FSOC resulted from its having named insurance companies, particularly MetLife, as systemically significant (). In this regard, one of the complaints directed at FSOC was that its members lacked sufficient experience in insurance to evaluate industry risks. This resulted, critics say, in a tendency to overstate such risks. Thus, Mr. Workman's views are likely to prove significant with regard to any decision by FSOC to name additional insurance…

Vice Chair Quarles raises reasonable concerns about how a virtual currency would perform in a time of stress. One specific worry – that a central bank would adopt digital currency – seems unlikely, given that the central bank would, thereby, lose control over its own currency. A more realistic concern is that fears of an unreliable central bank (think Venezuela) would motivate a population's movement away from use of that bank's currency.

On its face, FINRA Rule 5250 seems common-sensical. However, given the high costs of making a market in securities, and reports that there are few firms that are willing to go to the effort and expense in making markets in the securities of small issuers, it may be appropriate to allow issuers to provide a broker-dealer some reward for being willing to commit capital to make a market in the issuer's stock, particularly if the fact of the payments and perhaps the amount and conditions were…