Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Gary Gensler has less than two weeks left as Wall
Speaker 2: Street's top cop as the chair of the US Securities
Speaker 2: and Exchange Commission. He took the job in April of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, not too long after the game Stop
Speaker 2: Short Squeeze, and during Gensler's tenure, the SEC has taken
Speaker 2: action against a number of high profile crypto executives. He's
Speaker 2: focused a lot on protecting investors, which is central to
Speaker 2: the agency's mission. Bloomberg's Jonathan Farrow asked Gensler about that
Speaker 2: in the context of crypto and meme stocks in his
Speaker 2: first interview with Bloomberg as SEC chair, just a few
Speaker 2: months after he.
Speaker 3: Started, Gary, what do you do for a group of
Speaker 3: investors that don't want your protection. Well, I'm going to
Speaker 3: be animated every day in this job by working families,
Speaker 3: and working families need the protection.
Speaker 2: Gensler's approach to enforcement in the world of crypto especially
Speaker 2: made him unpopular. Maintains most cryptocurrencies are in fact securities
Speaker 2: and therefore are subject to regulation by the SEC. President
Speaker 2: elect Donald Trump campaigned in part on getting rid of Ginstler.
Speaker 2: On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint
Speaker 2: a new SEC chair.
Speaker 1: I didn't know who's that unpopular. Well, I didn't know
Speaker 1: who's that unpopular.
Speaker 2: Let me say it again. On day one, I will
Speaker 2: fire Gary Ginstler, whoa Well Trump will not have to
Speaker 2: do that. On November twenty first, Gensler announced his decision
Speaker 2: to step down on inauguration Day at noon, which led
Speaker 2: to much rejoicing in the world of crypto. At least
Speaker 2: on TikTok, Oh my god, it's finally here. Gary Gandler
Speaker 2: officially resigns from the SEC. This demon has been torturing
Speaker 2: the entire crypto industry for like three to four years,
Speaker 2: literally regulating to re enforcement and going off to nearly
Speaker 2: every major crypto company in the United States. This week
Speaker 2: I went to Washington to interview the SEC chair. It's
Speaker 2: the third in a series of conversations I've had with
Speaker 2: members of President Biden's administration who were leaving government, including
Speaker 2: Treasury Secretary Jennet Yellen and Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln.
Speaker 1: Let's go down to Bloomberg News as David Gura, who
Speaker 1: is sitting down with the outgoing chair of the SEC
Speaker 1: over in Washington.
Speaker 2: David Ordio. Thank you very much, and welcome to our
Speaker 2: listeners and viewers worldwide. I'm here with Chergary Gensler in
Speaker 2: his office in Washington, d C. Great to speak with you,
Speaker 2: Great to be with you, David. Part of it was
Speaker 2: live on television and radio, but we kept the conversation
Speaker 2: going when the cameras cut away. I asked him to
Speaker 2: reflect on his time as the US's top securities regulator
Speaker 2: and what it's like to be called out by the
Speaker 2: past and future president along with the world's richest man,
Speaker 2: and what's next for the SEC I'm David Dura, and
Speaker 2: this is the Big Take from Bloomberg News Today. On
Speaker 2: the show, an exit interview with the thirty third Chair
Speaker 2: of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, his
Speaker 2: views on crypto, on AI, on China, and what advice
Speaker 2: he has for his successor. I want to start first
Speaker 2: just by asking you how you're feeling here with less
Speaker 2: than two weeks left in your term. You have been
Speaker 2: subject to fair amount of attacks, some vitriol. How have
Speaker 2: you processed all of that?
Speaker 3: You walk into this central square and you debate these
Speaker 3: important things for three hundred and thirty million Americans. I've
Speaker 3: worked over the years with Hillary Clinton on a number
Speaker 3: of campaigns, and I remember Hillary saying once it's like,
Speaker 3: if you're not willing to be attacked, you can't go
Speaker 3: into the public square and debate policy. And so I
Speaker 3: think it's part of our great democracy. It's a great
Speaker 3: privilege to be in a role like this. But what's
Speaker 3: remarkable about this role is it oversees the one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty trillion dollars capital market, which touches everything in
Speaker 3: our economy. Because you've got to raise money for most
Speaker 3: of what we do in our economy, and people save
Speaker 3: you ask about the attacks and things like that.
Speaker 1: That's what public policy is about.
Speaker 2: You came into this job. You gave a big speech
Speaker 2: in which you analogize the crypto world to the wild West.
Speaker 2: I guess that makes you the sheriff. So as you
Speaker 2: get ready to hang up your spurs, jeez, less of
Speaker 2: a wild I've really been laboring the metaphor. But is
Speaker 2: it less of a wild West than it was as
Speaker 2: you leave this office.
Speaker 3: My daughters, if they ever watched this interview, wells, we're
Speaker 3: your spurs, dad. I think that we've done some good things. Look,
Speaker 3: I came in. My predecessor, Jake Clayton, who was in
Speaker 3: this office, had also tried to address this new emerging
Speaker 3: part of finance. Jay was trying to address it, and
Speaker 3: he brought eighty enforcement actions in this area. We've brought
Speaker 3: in about a hund in our four years.
Speaker 1: It was consistent.
Speaker 3: I've been around finance for over four decades, and everything
Speaker 3: in the market's trade on a mixture of fundamentals and
Speaker 3: sentiment at any given time. I've never seen a field
Speaker 3: that's so much wrapped up in sentiment and not so
Speaker 3: much about fundamentals. And these ten to fifteen thousand projects,
Speaker 3: many of them will not survive. They're like venture capital investments.
Speaker 3: They're not going to survive. But they're also a fair
Speaker 3: number of small pump and dump schemes and other things
Speaker 3: in this And of course we've lived through a few
Speaker 3: years where they became notorious, but they're in jail. The
Speaker 3: sambank and Freeds and the do Kwon's where tens of
Speaker 3: billions of dollars were lost by investors.
Speaker 2: Settle something for me, because I think when you came
Speaker 2: into office, a lot of people looked at your immediate background,
Speaker 2: having researched a lot of digital assets, worked on them
Speaker 2: in MIT, and thought that you had perhaps a champion
Speaker 2: of them. Has there been an evolution in the way
Speaker 2: that you approach crypto over that transition from academia to
Speaker 2: hear or while you've been here, people think you are
Speaker 2: somebody who's adamantly opposed.
Speaker 1: To here's the evolution.
Speaker 3: When you're in academia or when you're not in this job,
Speaker 3: you can study something and observe it as I did,
Speaker 3: and try to teach students what's the value proposition about
Speaker 3: this new technology? What's the value proposition of this new
Speaker 3: investment vehicles? But then when you're in this job, this
Speaker 3: is a chair of a five member commission or roughly
Speaker 3: five thousand people. That's a law enforcement agency, and this
Speaker 3: is a field rife with challenges and non compliance with
Speaker 3: the securities laws. You take an oath of office, you
Speaker 3: do what you can to protect the investing public.
Speaker 2: On that note, we saw in this last election cycle
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty five million dollars spent by crypto
Speaker 2: companies on races across the country.
Speaker 3: Did you notice that very few, if any, actually advertised
Speaker 3: on crypto?
Speaker 1: I didn't note that.
Speaker 2: Just does that give you concern the role that the
Speaker 2: crypto industry is playing, not just within these halls, but
Speaker 2: across Washington, across the country in those.
Speaker 3: Rus I just think of every day investors. I think
Speaker 3: it's very consequential to every day investors that we put
Speaker 3: in place rules that insiders of companies, seniors executives can
Speaker 3: no longer just file a plan on a Monday when
Speaker 3: they had material non public information and sell their stock
Speaker 3: on that same Monday. But we've put in place rules
Speaker 3: that they will have to wait ninety days. And why
Speaker 3: ninety days, because then they might release that material non
Speaker 3: public information. So I think that's what we really focused
Speaker 3: on and that every day investors have benefited from that.
Speaker 2: Let me pivot to risks, and you've sounded the alarm
Speaker 2: about artificial into eleigence at f SoC, you gave a
Speaker 2: big speech at a law school, you did one at
Speaker 2: the National Press Club. It's something that you're clearly thinking.
Speaker 3: I even wrote about it when I was at MITRE
Speaker 3: you go four and a half years ago.
Speaker 2: We are facing now four years where one geopolitical consultancy
Speaker 2: says we're having AI unbound, that there will be less
Speaker 2: regulatory interest in AI. What are the consequences of that.
Speaker 2: As you see, it's to the financial markets not having
Speaker 2: anything close to a robust regulatory regime.
Speaker 3: For AI, it's very dramatic advancements. I think it's going
Speaker 3: to transform so many parts of our economy in good ways.
Speaker 3: We are automating this, and the Industrial revolution was automating
Speaker 3: this and this, And for those that couldn't see, I
Speaker 3: meant we're automating our brains and not our biceps, our
Speaker 3: biceps and our thighs. And I think it will boost productivity,
Speaker 3: but there'll be a lot of disruptions in terms of
Speaker 3: the capital mark, in terms of finance. I think about
Speaker 3: the challenges of the conflicts if your robo advisor, are
Speaker 3: they giving you advice on behalf of the asset manager
Speaker 3: or you?
Speaker 1: And who are they putting first?
Speaker 3: And it could be in some opaque mathematical formula deep
Speaker 3: inside the algorithm.
Speaker 2: Another challenge facing the agency it could see its budget
Speaker 2: slashed under the incoming Trump administration, which is promised to
Speaker 2: reduce spending on government agencies across the board.
Speaker 1: That's in a moment.
Speaker 2: SEC chair Gary Gensler has already announced he's leaving his
Speaker 2: job at noon on inauguration day. It's been well established
Speaker 2: that President elect Trump would not have left him in
Speaker 2: the job. I wanted to ask Gensler about Trump's plans
Speaker 2: for the SEC and other agencies. The ethos, it seems,
Speaker 2: of this incoming administration is to cut staff and cut
Speaker 2: bureaucracy here in Washington. What would that mean for this
Speaker 2: agency if you had a less stout.
Speaker 3: I think it would be unfortunate because we're already spread
Speaker 3: too thin. We get forty or fifty thousand tips, complaints
Speaker 3: and referrals a year, a year a year now back
Speaker 3: to an earlier subject. I think eighteen percent of those
Speaker 3: are from the crypto field, and at any given time
Speaker 3: we only have the staff to maybe investigate some small portions.
Speaker 3: So we're constantly trioshing.
Speaker 2: Has there been an SEC DOGE summit, and has anyone
Speaker 2: working for that new Elon musk I vet Romaswami outfit
Speaker 2: come to the agency to talk about potential changes or.
Speaker 1: I think you.
Speaker 3: Know, and it might sound familiar to what Tony Blinkoln
Speaker 3: told you. There's one president at a time, there's one
Speaker 3: commission at a time. I'm proud of this agency, but
Speaker 3: that was folks do after January twentieth'll take up at
Speaker 3: that point in time.
Speaker 2: Looking ahead, Have you had a conversation with Paul Atkins,
Speaker 2: your presumptive successor here, and if so, what did you
Speaker 2: stress to him is most important to think about as
Speaker 2: he would take over the High Agency.
Speaker 1: Paul and I did catch up.
Speaker 3: You know, he knows this agency, He's worked at this agency,
Speaker 3: and he was a commissioner for six years, and so
Speaker 3: I won't say all the things a private conversation, but
Speaker 3: Richard Breden was the first person to hire Paul to
Speaker 3: the agency. Richard was chair under President Bush number forty one.
Speaker 3: And I shared with Paul the advice that Richard gave
Speaker 3: me coming into this job. And Richard said, remember, every
Speaker 3: single day in the job is one day closer to
Speaker 3: when you will join the former's club. And you can
Speaker 3: take that a number of ways. What I took that
Speaker 3: as Richard's way of saying, every day such a privilege.
Speaker 3: Use it well, use it on behalf of the American public.
Speaker 3: And so that was my main advice to Paul.
Speaker 2: A sort of big thing question just about financial regulation
Speaker 2: and the US's role in the world. You've said, though
Speaker 2: the US equity markets are the deepest, most liquid in
Speaker 2: the world. We can't take that leadership for granted at
Speaker 2: this moment of transition. There will be some I imagine,
Speaker 2: who wonder just about the certainty of regulation in this
Speaker 2: country and how the US holds on to that position
Speaker 2: of prominence or preeminence.
Speaker 1: In the world. Are we doing ourselves a disservice?
Speaker 2: Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by having these
Speaker 2: kind of radical changes in leadership of regulatory agencies? So
Speaker 2: it went from Jake Clayton to you, you had your own
Speaker 2: regulatory agenda. Now we'll go, presumably to a Paul Adkins one,
Speaker 2: and he'll prioritize certain things, push other things to the wayside.
Speaker 1: Investors love certainty.
Speaker 2: Is there an inherent lack of certainty in the way
Speaker 2: that we have financial regulation this country?
Speaker 1: That's detrimental.
Speaker 3: I think democracies are a very good thing. The American
Speaker 3: public to speak through their votes as to who sits
Speaker 3: and seats of consequence, like is it in? I think
Speaker 3: what's really important for regardless of who's in this seat,
Speaker 3: is that it can't take for granted that we're going
Speaker 3: to be number one and that their capital markets might
Speaker 3: be the deepest and liquid now. But if they get
Speaker 3: more costly, if they get rickety and unstable in any way, if.
Speaker 1: They favor certain folks.
Speaker 3: Rather than having a really competitive environment where you have
Speaker 3: equal and open access to the capital markets, full access,
Speaker 3: I should say, and fair access, then we could give
Speaker 3: up our mantle. And it relates to the dollars role
Speaker 3: in the world. A lot of people talk about the
Speaker 3: dollar as a reserve currency. I say, that's interesting, important, maybe,
Speaker 3: but it's really about our capital markets that are forty
Speaker 3: to forty five percent of the world's capital markets. Our
Speaker 3: stock market is sixty trillion dollars in size, the French
Speaker 3: stock market, the UK stock market three trillion, two to
Speaker 3: three trillion. We have single companies that have market values
Speaker 3: more than that. Even the Chinese stock markets maybe at
Speaker 3: twelve thirteen trillion. But we can't take it for granted.
Speaker 3: Got to keep it good disclosure, free of fraud, manipulation,
Speaker 3: and really have as best you can and competitive all
Speaker 3: to all trading. And then markets go up, markets go down,
Speaker 3: and you know, people get to decide what risks they
Speaker 3: want to take.
Speaker 1: Lastly, what's next for you?
Speaker 2: Do you have plans for what you'll do come January twentieth,
Speaker 2: when you leave this job.
Speaker 3: I don't have anything doing Nolyx on this on this program.
Speaker 3: It really is a remarkable agency, and I want to
Speaker 3: hand it off well to the next team. I'm very focused,
Speaker 3: of course on the staff, the great staff here over
Speaker 3: these next ten days as well, and then hand it
Speaker 3: over to others that will have the privilege. As Richard
Speaker 3: Breeden said that each day is one day closer to
Speaker 3: one they're joined the former's club.
Speaker 2: Sure, Gunsler, Thank you very much, Thank you appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
Speaker 2: This episode is produced by David Fox and Jessica Beck.
Speaker 2: It was mixed and sound designed by Alex Sagura in
Speaker 2: fact Check by Adriana Tapia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shavin,
Speaker 2: who also edited this episode with Aaron Edwards and Meghan Howard.
Speaker 2: Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is
Speaker 2: the Cole Beamster Board Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.
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