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United States Politics

Gensler Confirmed as Top Wall Street Cop, Bringing New Era of Tough Scrutiny (politico.com) 47

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Gary Gensler to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, putting in place a battle-tested Wall Street watchdog at a moment when Democrats are looking to rein in financial market risk. From a report: The Senate confirmed Gensler in a 53-45 vote. The MIT professor and former Goldman Sachs partner is returning to government after serving as a top regulator in the Obama administration, when he cracked down on big bank trading activities that fueled the 2008 global financial crisis. Gensler will lead work on sweeping new federal regulations that would require companies to disclose their contributions and exposure to climate change, which is poised to trigger a huge lobbying fight and is already stirring deep partisan tensions. The effort will be in focus next week when President Joe Biden holds an international climate summit. And following four years of light-touch regulation under Trump, Democrats are urging the SEC to step up oversight of major financial firms after a series of high-profile market snafus this year. In recent days, for example, international banks with operations in the U.S. suffered billions of dollars in losses after a little-known investment fund collapsed and sent shockwaves through the markets.
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Gensler Confirmed as Top Wall Street Cop, Bringing New Era of Tough Scrutiny More

Gensler Confirmed as Top Wall Street Cop, Bringing New Era of Tough Scrutiny

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  • I'd understand if this were a federal appointment concerning technology, but why is this here?

    Bonus points for an argument that I can't turn on its head in order to justify even more meaningless articles being featured on Slashdot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      I'd understand if this were a federal appointment concerning technology, but why is this here? Bonus points for an argument that I can't turn on its head in order to justify even more meaningless articles being featured on Slashdot.

      It got you (and I) to click on it, and comment. Don't want articles like this? Don't contribute to the feedback cycle.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Rip!ey ( 599235 )
        Slashdot really needs to experiment with extending their bias system to posted articles, the same way they do with submissions ( https://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] ).

      • Guy promised it'd be different this time and he's following the same path with doing absolutely nothing different than the prior 3 presidents

        - Appointing the usual crew of ex-industry hacks to regulate their old industry
        - We'll get the minimum wage raised....oops Congress didn't play along...not me I did not do it

        Can some of the low hanging fruit favoring actual US Citizens happen instead of boosting the monies of companies, wall street and the 1% ?

        Maybe some baby steps....

        - Set auctions with fully open bid

    • I kinda need to agree. I feel it was mostly political click bait.
      The closest I could come up with is the fact that some of the largest companies on earth are Technology Companies that we cover all the time. In which putting these companies under scrutiny could effect our relationship with the technology....

      But that is really a big stretch.

    • Stuff that Matters (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      In case you somehow didn't notice the total economic collapse in 2008 regulating Wall Street (who thanks to bailouts can freely gamble with our money) is definately "Stuff That Matters".

      Still, Ex Goldman Sachs and this guy is being sold to me as a cop for Wall Street? I'll believe it when I see it. Mind you an ex-Comcast guy gave us Net Neutrality up until Trump put Ajit Pai in charge.

      • Ex Goldman Sachs and this guy is being sold to me as a cop for Wall Street?

        To regulate Wall Street, it may help to have someone who understands Wall Street.

        But people disagree on the root cause of the 2008 crash. Some think it was a lack of regulation. Others think it was the government policy to promote mortgages for those who couldn't afford them while underwriting the risk by guaranteeing CDOs.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by invid ( 163714 )

          But people disagree on the root cause of the 2008 crash. Some think it was a lack of regulation. Others think it was the government policy to promote mortgages for those who couldn't afford them while underwriting the risk by guaranteeing CDOs.

          It was a lack of regulation. The government policy to promote mortgages didn't help, but it certainly wasn't enough to take the whole shebang down. Those who blame bad government policy instead of lack of government regulation tend to be those who believe in the miraculous power of the invisible hand of capitalism.

          • Gov: We want you to loan to low-income minorities.
            WS: But those mortgages are too risky.
            Gov: No problem. We will guarantee the mortgages so you can't lose money.
            WS: Ok.
            <Housing market crashes>
            Gov: Hey! You guys made risky investments!!

        • it may help to have someone who understands Chicken Coups.

          Sure, we could hire a farmer who studied poultry production at a University, but I like the cut of that Mr Fox's jib!
      • We recovered from a total economic collapse in under a decade? That's certainly impressive. Disregarding hyperbole, everything matters to someone, but we're hardly going to be talking about the Premier League, which if you were to survey people on what matters would likely rate above anything concerning Wall Street. If something really matters to you, find a community of like minding people and discuss it there. Don't mistake your own beliefs or interests for those of everyone else. This has nothing to do w

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dcw3 ( 649211 )

          "We recovered from a total economic collapse in under a decade? That's certainly impressive. Disregarding hyperbole..."

          That was hyperbole. It wasn't nearly a "total economic collapse". We've been through worse (the great depression), and had another that was nearly as bad in 1980-81...14% unemployment in parts the country.

          That said, I agree with you on the article not belonging here.

      • ... Still, Ex Goldman Sachs and this guy is being sold to me as a cop for Wall Street? I'll believe it when I see it. ...

        Yea, I was ready to point out Trump's "drain the swamp by hiring all the alligators" approach until I saw this guy was ex Goldman too. America needs a 12-step program to lose it's addiction to rich, white fucks in charge.

        • it's fucks in general. We've had Goldman Sachs in charge of our Treasury (and by extension our economy) for 30 years. How's that worked out for you? I know it sucks for me. I've been through 3 major busts in my adult life and another 2 or 3 when I was a kid.

      • What they meant is that he's a cop for /r/WallStreetBets.

    • Anyone trying to preserve their savings is not using a bank account anymore, their money one way or another is sitting in stocks*. Stability is kind of important. Unless you have no money, then I guess this isn't interesting to you.

      *Ok maybe bonds too.
      • I'm not even sure what kind of point you're trying to make. Just looking at interest rates and the rate of inflation would tell you that a savings account would not preserve value. Assuming for the sake of argument that banks were providing better interest rates, it would only be because they were lending the money to anyone investing it in some kind of outfit that would generate a return. It seems far more natural to eliminate banks as a middleman in that relationship and allow people to directly invest in

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )
      Same reason there's at least one article every day about global warming, it's part of /. ownership's agenda.
      • Those are at the very least related to science or posted in relation to some bit of technology that may help with the problem. This has nothing to do with technology or science.

  • Um Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PDiddly ( 7030698 ) on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @02:53PM (#61273492)

    "when he cracked down on big bank trading activities that fueled the 2008 global financial crisis."
    By this do they mean the federally mandated sub prime loans that were going to eventually default because they never should have been have been issued in the first place.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • These risky sub-prime loans were in no way "federally mandated".

        Translation: "If the Feds hadn't forced the banks to loan money to ni--ers..." (they didn't)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dcw3 ( 649211 )

          Your racial commentary aside, what do you think the CRA was intended to do?

          In July 1993, President Bill Clinton asked regulators to reform the CRA in order to make examinations more consistent, clarify performance standards, and reduce cost and compliance burden.[46]

          Robert Rubin, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, under President Clinton, explained that this was in line with President Clinton's strategy to "deal with the problems of the inner city and distressed rural communities".

          From Inve

          • So what part of the CRA forced banks to make NINJA loans [wikipedia.org]?

            Oh that's right, none. You're just parroting white supremacist propaganda.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dcw3 ( 649211 )

              Oh, when did Wikipedia and Investopedia become racist sites, because that's where those quote were from you fucking moron.

  • Pull the other one (Score:1, Insightful)

    by VicVegas ( 990077 )

    President "nothing will fundamentally change" Biden installs a Goldman Sachs toadie to ensure Wall Street profitability. Politico thinks its readers are too stupid to know that with Gensler, no meaningful reform will happen. Bonus: They whitewash Obama's failed legacy, just as they are regularly doing with war criminal Bush Jr.'s.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @03:12PM (#61273598)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Left Goldman Sachs in 1997 (Score:5, Informative)

    by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @03:17PM (#61273622)

    Since I see comments to the effect of "ex-Goldman, must be insider financial trash" and that may be true but the man does have some bonafides in regulation.

    "helped write the Sarbanes-Oxley law, which tightened accounting standards in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals."

    Gensler was described as "one of the leading reformers after the financial crisis."

    "During Gensler's tenure at the CFTC, he worked closely with the Obama Administration, United States Congress and other regulators to transform the $400 trillion financial derivatives markets that were at the center of the 2008 financial crisis"

    After the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, Gensler led the CFTC's effort to write the rules required to regulate the swaps markets. He oversaw the agency as it wrote 68 new rules, orders and guidances and as its reach extended from a $35 trillion futures market to a $400 trillion swaps market. Under Gensler, the bipartisan commission reached unanimous votes to approve more than 70 percent of the agency's rulemakings. By the time Gensler left the CFTC in January 2014, the agency was near completion of the rule-writing process to implement the Dodd-Frank Act"

    So while he's not the bomb-throwing, break the system type regulator I would like to see, he's not exactly some financial market stooge either. It's a perfectly cromulent Biden-style pick. Let's remember folks, the neoliberals are still the majority in DC, take what we can get for the moment.

    • helped write the Sarbanes-Oxley law, which tightened accounting standards in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals.

      Never had to deal with the follow-on effects of SarbOx, did ya? Pretty much completely pointless and a vast waste of company resources to deal with for no gain at all.

      Worst law ever, what it really was for was to create massive overhead for health care providers, to strangle any small upcomers that might try to threaten the big companies.

      This guy is in there for one reason only - to prot

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by _merlin ( 160982 )

        Sarbanes-Oxley compliance is a pain in the arse, but the requirements that you record all changes to your production environment are a very good thing. The sign-off step means you always have at least two people eying each change, so you're more likely to spot things that are going to cause major issues. Having the changes logged means you've got a far better picture of what happened when things do go wrong.

        Really, this kind of stuff should be common sense. If you're not doing this, you're asking for tro

    • You don't get Goldman-Sachs strategy.

      Their goal *is* to destroy all competitors.

      A nice example is how they killed Bank of America. You onow who the government regularly talked with to plan what to do to BoA? Lloyd Blankfeyn, boss of Goldman Sachs at the time. You know who sold BoA the bad financial products ths tbroke their neck in the first place? Goldnan Sachs!

      Nobody is black-eyed enough to not smell that that was a planned hit job.

      In fact, if you look at it, the entire "economical crisis" was a hit job o

  • President Biden seems to me to be doing many good things for the United States.

    What do you think?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GlennC ( 96879 )

      What do you think?

      I think he's better than the last guy, but that's an awfully low bar to clear.

      At this point, we're still heading toward Civil War 2.0, but it may not be as bloody as it would have been under the last guy.

    • I think it's a trap.

      "Excellent" does not include keeping the Guantanamo torture gulags open and drone murdering foreign people in perpetual "not-war". Or not dismantling the DHS&NSA Gestapo. (Just the evil part. 'Bout 90-99% I guess.)

      So yes, I like many of his new policies. But I don't trust anything for more than five seconds. Because I still remember falling for the Obama hype and getting shat in the face as a reward. (Though most of that is due to a Republican Senate/House just blocking *all* the thi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      What has improved?

      The economy was improving by leaps and bounds already.

      The pandemic vaccinations have increased but at the same pace as they were already.

      The southern border is now a shit show, and self inflicted wound, and Joe claims it happens every year, and that they're all coming here because he's a "nice guy".

      Planned withdrawal from Afghanistan has been pushed out to 9/11...WTF!?! Everyone who knows anything is saying WTF.

      $2T "Jobs" bill will create ~2M more jobs. There are a lot better ways to spe

  • Once again, we're held hostage by a bunch of greasy con men.

  • "Destroy all competition".
    I'm sure Gensler will be tough, and regulate everything to death but his "former" partner.

    The only good thing is, that Gold Man-Sacks is so greedy that they will evem destroy those that they rely on and actually need to survive. ;)

    Hey, Im not complaining. I liked Fight Club a lot! :)

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