In essence, this no-action relief fixes unintentional overreach in the original CFTC registration requirement, which seemed to mandate the CFTC registration of a non-U.S. intermediary doing business with a non-U.S. person – a result that makes no sense. While CFTC Commissioners continue to effect small fixes to problems that arose from rushed rulemaking, it would be nice to see them take on some bigger fixes as well (e.g., a procedure for requiring exchange trading). It would also be…

Financial institutions are fighting the rule because they believe it will do them damage. If firms were genuinely indifferent, as the legislators suggest, they would not oppose the rule.

It seems odd for a regulatory agency to speak of its own "financial well-being" as if it were a person. The notion that the CFPB maintains its "financial well-being" without being dependent on funding from Congress is difficult to reconcile given the division of authority under the Constitution. If the CFPB can maintain not only its financial well-being but also its financial independence without any input from Congress, then why can't other Federal Agencies do the same?

As Vice Chair Fischer notes, banks (very correctly) dread showing any "signs of weakness." In the aftermath of Dodd-Frank, there was a sudden burst of enthusiasm for "transparency" and "fuller disclosure," as if absolute truth were a panacea. It is not. The opposite is sometimes true: too much disclosure of problems at a bank potentially can trigger a run on that bank (and a run on one bank may spread to others). Warning against the dangers of too much disclosure is not…