What You Need to Know
- Gensler is set to appear before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday.
- He underscores the importance of rooting out wrongdoing and adapting to new technologies.
- As CFTC chief, Gensler “took decisive action to increase transparency,” he says.
Gary Gensler, President Joe Biden’s pick to be chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, plans to tell Senators Tuesday during his nomination hearing that the U.S. markets didn’t become the finest in the world through “happenstance.”
In his prepared remarks, Gensler states that when “the SEC does its job — when there are clear rules of the road and a cop on the beat to enforce them — our economy grows and our nation prospers. But when we take our eyes off the ball — when we fail to root out wrongdoing, or to adapt to new technologies, or to really understand novel financial instruments — things can go very wrong. And when that happens, people get hurt.”
He promises to continue the SEC’s goals of “strengthening transparency and accountability in our markets, so people can invest with confidence, and be protected from fraud and manipulation.”
During his time as former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gensler plans to tell members of the Senate Banking Committee, he and his fellow commissioners “took decisive action to increase transparency and reduce risk in the $400 trillion swaps market.”