In the past few years, several important financial regulations have been struck down by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals because the regulatory agency failed to prove that the benefits of those regulations exceeded the costs. There is no current explicit legal requirement for financial agencies to conduct cost-benefit analyses, but given vagaries in the underlying statutes, the Court has felt that it has the authority to insist on a greater degree of economic rigor than agencies often display. In a parallel development, Senator Shelby has introduced a bill that would explicitly require financial agencies to perform cost-benefit analyses. If the bill is enacted, we will see even greater bloodshed in the courts.

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