Courtesy of Pam Martens
Gary Gensler
Today is the 85th Day of the Joe Biden Presidency and his nominee to Chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, has yet to be confirmed by the full Senate. Apparently, the moneyed interests that control the corporate wing of the Republican party have put Senator Pat Toomey in charge of attempting to derail the nomination.
A full Senate vote will take place on Gensler at 11:45 a.m. today, but that vote will be limited to Gensler serving out the balance of the term of Trump’s former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, which expires in – wait for it – 52 days. The Senate Banking Committee had cleared Gensler to not only fill Clayton’s remaining term but had also cleared his reappointment for a five-year term ending on June 5, 2026. That five-year term will not be voted on by the Senate today according to yesterday’s Senate proceedings, likely because Toomey and his ilk are hoping Republicans will take back the Senate in 2022 and return to their Trump-era deregulatory agenda on Wall Street.
Under current rules, Gensler would be able to serve in his post for an additional 18 months after this term expires if Biden does not nominate a successor.
During his long-winded remarks against the Gensler nomination on the Senate floor yesterday, Toomey showed his dismissal of calls to rein in the gamification of markets by trading platforms like Robinhood that use various behavioral prompts to encourage more active trading among novice investors. Until recently, Robinhood’s trading app had showered confetti after a trade was made. After criticism in Senate and House hearings, Robinhood announced it would scrap the confetti.
The seductive nature of Robinhood’s app was part of recent Congressional hearings on the wild trading in shares of GameStop and other meme stocks, which revealed a deeply conflicted, payment-for-order-flow trading structure benefiting billionaire hedge fund titans on Wall Street. (See here, here, and here.)
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