Firms should be mindful of the extensive conditions imposed by the SEC on the purchase of fractional shares, particularly the SEC's disclosure requirement. In the long run, the adviser's Form ADV is probably the easiest place in which to make disclosures. For that reason, firms should update their forms accordingly.

Since Mr. Dudley is pondering the lack of growth in investment spending and whether the economy is going through a period of secular stagnation, the ideal question for him to ask might be this: are there regulations that are materially damaging to economic growth? New rules have imposed billions of dollars' worth of compliance and transactional costs. Many of those rules are not particularly sensible and a fair number are actually destructive. The time for regulators to exercise self…

Anyone who thinks they can purchase out-of-money options immediately before a merger and hide their million-dollar profit by booking the transactions in the account of someone who shares their last name probably didn't have much of a future as a securities analyst.

The adopted changes to the bankruptcy decision are quite significant. In effect, they turn the creditors of FCMs into the guarantors of FCMs' obligations to customers. The same result may occur with respect to the creditors of a broker-dealer and its customer obligations. (The actions of the Lehman trustee in bankruptcy had similar effect). It's easy to see why this result might be popular politically, but whether the policy itself is good or not seems far from obvious. Effectively…