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Congressional stock trading has fallen off sharply this year, according to an analysis by a popular financial news site — and some insiders believe it’s because US lawmakers are feeling heat from a possible legislative clampdown. The volume of stock trades made by members of Congress tumbled more than 75% in the nine months of this […]
Congressman John Rose (R-TN) asked Gensler: “Regarding cryptocurrencies … I’m interested in why you have pursued a litigation-heavy strategy despite the fact that neither you nor any of your senior staff are litigators — neither your Chief of Staff nor your Policy Director or even your General Counsel. Why have you settled on such a […]
U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff is introducing legislation to ban stock trading by members of Congress. Sens. Ossoff and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) today introduced the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, which will require all members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children to place their stocks into a blind trust or divest the holding — ensuring they cannot […]
Two U.S. senators are set this week to introduce bipartisan legislation to bar members of the federal executive branch and lawmakers from owning stock in individual companies, as new polling shows broad public support for such a measure. The bill from Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) and Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) would permit the president, […]
On Monday, Gensler said he was “disappointed” in the judge’s ruling, and that the commission is “looking at it and assessing that option.” However, Torres asserted that the SEC’s odds of scoring an immediate appeal on the ruling are “vanishingly small,” since some issues in the case will require fact-finding, which takes time. In the […]
Though congressional leaders have continued to spar over the best course of action for crypto regulation, getting a bill to the president’s desk may only be the start of the battle. Federal policy expert Dorothy DeWitt cautoned crypto companies on Friday that even if policy advances, rules can take a decade or more to pass. […]
Novelist Joseph Heller coined the now-common term in his novel of the same name. In Heller’s screwball antiwar tragedy, “Catch 22” was a circular bureaucratic rule, designed by the U.S. government to prevent draftees from leaving the World War II-era military. According to the (fictional) rule, you could only get out of the Army if […]
Is Congress the only hope? In the midst of the SEC’s crypto crackdown, there are glimmers of hope that Congress could be on the path to providing a clear and practical regulatory framework. As noted above, a bi-partisan bill was introduced a few weeks ago to clarify that the underlying asset of an investment contract […]
Lastly, McHenry requested a freeze on the SEC’s enforcement budget and said it does not need the more than 50 additional personnel that have been requested. The SEC’s budget request provides for 53 net hires for its Enforcement Division alone. McHenry added that the SEC’s aggressive enforcement actions against cryptocurrency have brought “further uncertainty to […]
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee that oversees the SEC, sent a letter this week to SEC Chair Gary Gensler complaining that an earlier April 26 request had been rebuffed. The letters, also signed by Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), coincided with recent hearings – including one on May 10 […]