Matt Levine, Columnist

The SEC Was Busy Last Week

Decorrelation, NDAs, startup accounting, Vanguard taxes, DCG, AML, cash sweeps, etc., plus the Trumpcoin.

January 21, 2025 at 6:25 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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What if the US Securities and Exchange Commission never brings another enforcement case? What if it’s like “ahh, go ahead, do all the fraud you want”? What if the only enforcement cases are against BlackRock for doing ESG investing, or against short sellers of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.? Crime might be legal now, if you are a vocal enough supporter of Donald Trump, and the financial and crypto industries are rushing to support him. It’s hard to imagine anyone getting in trouble for texting about work from their personal phones, now.

Just in case, the SEC filed a ton of enforcement actions on Friday, the last practical day it could do so before the administration changed.1 We will talk about a few of the highlights in the following sections.