Like the SEC, the CFTC over-emphasizes its role as an enforcement regulator and as a collector of fines. Generally, the economy would be better served if the financial regulators focused more on rules (or the elimination of rules) that improve the markets.  

As for the CFTC's record $17.1 billion in monetary relief, over two-thirds relates to FTX, so the amount will not be collected in light of the FTX bankruptcy. The CFTC is not the only agency boasting of record, but…

Paul Atkins is a significant thinker on regulatory policy and governmental structure. His broad experience ranges from his work as a former SEC Commissioner to starting and running a compliance agency. That gives him in-the-weeds experience with practical problems.

The most immediate challenge Mr. Atkins will face is determining how the SEC's jurisdiction applies to cryptocurrencies. His longer-term challenge, however, may be to refashion the workings and culture of the agency. Over…

Part of the SEC's boast, in the first paragraph of its press release, is that it obtained $8.2 billion in financial remedies, "the highest amount in SEC history." While it noted (in the second paragraph) that 56 percent of that amount was in connection with an enforcement action against Terraform Labs, a fraudulent purveyor of a cryptocurrency, the agency did not mention, as has been reported by  and others, that "[t]he SEC will collect little, if anything, on that settlement amount,…

Any investment adviser reading this and seeing that a $600 million dollar fraud through misallocation went unobserved should take the opportunity to review its own procedures for trade allocation. If the allegations prove true, that is a rather frightening breakdown in compliance procedures.