This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 8th,

2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is ripe for reform.

Cato's Jennifer Shulp details how the agency has become less welcoming

of public comment, has been overreaching with its rulemaking relative to its authority,

and in general having a hard time following the rules that are supposed to govern its own decisions.

We spoke last week.

It seems like what you're trying to get at here by offering helpful suggestions to the

Securities and Exchange Commission to improve its operations are really aimed at making

the agency at once more accountable and more effective at doing the things it's supposed to be doing.

Absolutely. The SEC over time this changes but over the past several years, if not even longer than that, has had issues

with accountability to the public and with going through the process that makes better public policy.

An important part of that process

is getting public feedback on the types of rules

that it wants to propose. And the SEC has had a lot of problems, particularly

over the past couple of years, in that space with not receiving proper public feedback.

But the problem goes back further than the Gensler administration.

In fact, Commissioner Perse, one of the Republican SEC

commissioners, gave a speech a few days ago talking about the SEC's deficiencies in terms of receiving

the proper amount of public comment and public input and feedback in order to make rules that make sense that are not unduly

burdensome that are within the SEC statutory authority. The SEC and any

...