With a change in administration comes an opportunity to reexamine the statute and financial regulation generally. Dodd-Frank is an ill-conceived statute that confuses quantities of regulation for quality. It is unfortunate, but understandable, that the outgoing regulators who implemented the statute continue to support it rather than address its deficiencies.

This proposal is meant to serve political and not regulatory purposes. If energy prices spike (as they often do in the ordinary course), proponents of the proposal will assert that the rule would have kept prices down if it had been adopted. Beyond that specific use, the proposal will be ignored (and rightly so).

Numerous firms have received FINRA inquiries regarding connections they might have with the sale of microcap securities. All firms would be well advised to revisit the quality and adequacy of their compliance procedures in that area.

Senator Elizabeth Warren complained that this bill would take power away from independent regulators and would give too much discretion to political appointees. The most significant issue of discretionary regulation, however, was created by Dodd-Frank itself, which provided for the formation of FSOC, and afforded FSOC the ability to declare that certain institutions were "systemically significant" under standards that are extremely open-ended and, subsequently, to regulate those…