The legislation granting FSOC the authority to designate firms as SIFIs is open-ended and ambiguous. The legislation effectively allows the government to decide arbitrarily which companies it elects to designate as SIFIs. (See, e.g., .) The House Report found that the FSOC decision-making process was more open-ended than the provisions governing it. Patrick Pinschmidt, who was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for FSOC, makes the point more sharply in his testimony in the…

If there is an overriding theme in the initiatives contained in the Visions and Estimates document, it is that Congress chooses to assert its authority over the so-called "regulatory state," or the unofficial fourth branch of the government. Most significantly, Congress is exercising that authority by asserting its funding power over the various regulatory agencies - particularly, the CFPB. Undoubtedly, many of these measures will be seen as reasons for Democrats and Republicans to…

Commissioner Stein's vision of the future is about more regulation. When she asks why companies stay private for longer periods of time, she does not consider the possible answer that the costs of regulation are not worth the benefits of going public. Her conclusion is never whether regulation is the answer, only which regulation is the answer, as in: "Should we apply enhanced disclosure laws to these private companies? Or perhaps they require a unique set of rules."

It is…

If government regulators have set margin requirements that effectively are procyclical (which likely is the case), then a good argument can be made that central clearing exacerbates systemic risk. That is, in the event of significant market downturns, clearing corporations exercise their unilateral power to demand more margin, which will suck liquidity out of the markets and accelerate a downward spiral. That is why the supposed obvious advantages of a central clearing system may not be so…