Clayton’s Exit at SEC Opens Door to Protect Investors
The agency has had its thumb on the scale for companies and Wall Street. It’s time to shift the balance back toward shareholders.
Not exactly shareholder friendly.
Photographer: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
As a presidential candidate and now as president-elect, Joe Biden hasn’t said much about his plans for regulating U.S. financial institutions. But in setting up his transition team, he sent an unmistakable signal about his intentions. He put Gary Gensler in charge of his financial policy transition team.
During the Obama administration, Gensler was a fearsome — and fearless — regulator. A Goldman Sachs alum — and a Treasury official during Bill Clinton’s presidency — Gensler was put in charge of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a small agency that Congress had just handed enormous new responsibilities. It was responsible for regulating the derivatives market, those “financial weapons of mass destruction”1 that had come so close to bringing down the world’s financial system during the 2008 crisis.