This is the Libertarian

the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church, and the Libertarian is Professor Richard Epstein.

Richard's the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution.

He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at NYU, and he's a senior lecturer at the

University of Chicago.

Richard, today I want to talk to you about your column.

We have a few nominations at the Federal Reserve Board to talk about,

as well as some movement at the SEC that you are particularly upset about.

So talk me through the new initiatives at the SEC first by Commissioner Allison Lee.

She appears to be worried that private capital markets been raising a lot of money without any public oversight.

So what's wrong with with extending oversight to private companies from the SEC?

Well, I mean the first maxim that everybody starts within this area is if it's not broke, don't fix it.

So you start looking at these private markets, and you asker, apart from the fact that we don't know anything about them which is also wrong.

What is it that they've done that is badly?

Is there some giant financial fraud which is left sophisticated investors in a lurch?

Is it that you've taken companies private that have gone bankrupt and

exploited so that what happens is many innocent employees have been hurt and

there's absolutely nothing of any sort of that kind that's there. What is in fact the case is that these

private corporations who do not operate under general government oversights are

able to more efficiently organize their affairs than public corporations which constantly have to worry

about filing various kinds of forms of one kind or another. So let me give you one example that's

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