Fast-Tracked Hypocrisy Threatens Capital Markets: Wall Street’s Congress Bullies SEC to Expedite the JOBS Act
Sept. 12, 2012
Fast-Tracked Hypocrisy Threatens Capital Markets: Wall Street’s Congress Bullies SEC to Expedite the JOBS Act
Thursday Hearing Highlights Hypocrisy on Cost-Benefit Analysis
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A House of Representatives hearing tomorrow on the JOBS Act highlights the hypocrisy of the GOP over the use of cost-benefit analyses.
The joint House oversight subcommittee and financial services subcommittee hearing is titled “The JOBS Act: Importance of Prompt Implementation for Entrepreneurs, Capital Formation, and Job Creation.” It seems designed to ignore the few investor protections in the law and to rush the cost-benefit process, which committee leaders conveniently consider important only for laws they don’t like, such as the Wall Street reform law, said Lisa Gilbert, acting director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division.
“Under withering attacks by House conservatives, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is being pushed into a double standard,” Gilbert said. “While the agency has delayed rules implementing the 2010 Wall Street reform law to assess its cost to industry, the SEC’s hastily concocted first proposed rule on the 2012 JOBS Act fails to consider costs to investors from reduced protections.
“Congressional supporters of the JOBS Act should check hypocrisy at the door and turn to the important task of exploring ways to prevent scam artists from poisoning newly deregulated capital markets,” Gilbert added.
Said Bartlett Naylor, financial reform advocate of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, “The misnamed JOBS Act is all leap and no logic. America’s economy suffers not because worthy entrepreneurs lack capital. It suffers because entrepreneurs lack consumers. Those consumers remain buried in debt because a deregulated, unsupervised Wall Street blew up the economy with reckless lending and speculation.
“The so-called JOBS Act will backfire if it empowers unscrupulous scam artists to dupe unsophisticated investors,” added Naylor. “And rushing the rulemaking process while ignoring critical rules to rein in Wall Street from Dodd-Frank will only make matters worse.”