Ostensibly in the name of investor protection, there is no shortage of new rules and enforcement actions coming from the Biden Administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The sheer volume and range of Chairman Gensler’s proposed regulatory agenda is dizzying and the negative impact it will have on our economy is difficult to quantify. In the first quarter of 2022, the SEC proposed only one less rule than it did during its most aggressive regulatory quarter ever, where it implemented portions of the ill-advised Dodd-Frank Act.
Though following the 2008 financial crisis, Congress and President Obama did get something right by enacting the bipartisan Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, a bipartisan bill easing the regulatory burden of raising capital that helped arrest the then declining amount of small business formation. It is odd then that the Biden Administration’s SEC is pursuing an agenda that undercuts President Obama’s bipartisan achievement and that will devastate capital formation in the United States.
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