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The SEC is 'short-staffed' and it needs more help to tackle everything from crypto to China, Gensler says
PUBLISHED WED, SEP 15 2021 10:41 AM EDT
UPDATED WED, SEP 15 2021 3:44 PM EDT
Thomas Franck
@TOMWFRANCK
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KEY POINTS
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler says Wall Street's top regulator is trying to juggle an long list of challenges with a smaller staff.
Gensler said his team is spread thin investigating fraudulent China-linked companies, managing those looking to enter public markets and monitoring cryptocurrencies.
"We are short-staffed," Gensler told CNBC. "I'd like to at least get back to where we were in 2016 and I think we should probably be 5% or 10% larger than that."

Chairman Gary Gensler said Wednesday that the SEC is trying to juggle an unprecedented list of financial challenges with a smaller staff.

"We are short-staffed," Gensler told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "It might sound odd to say that at an agency with 4,400 remarkable, dedicated staff working remotely during this challenging pandemic. But that's 4% to 5% less than we had just five years ago."

"We've got an IPO boom, we have a SPAC boom, we have cryptocurrencies to deal with. We have the issues we talked about earlier about China," he added. "I'd like to at least get back to where we were in 2016 and I think we should probably be 5% or 10% larger than that."

Gensler, who took over as SEC chief earlier this year, testified before Senate lawmakers on Tuesday that he needs "a lot more people" to deal with some 6,000 new digital assets. He said that the regulator is trying to balance an investor's liberty to spend their own money with decades-old laws that require the SEC find fraud in a broad range of assets.

"Investors get to decide what to invest in as long as companies make full and fair disclosures. In those laws, there is a very broad definition of what is a security," he said. "Cryptocurrencies have come along, I think the laws are clear – the case law, the Supreme Court's weighed in on this multiple times – that many of these tokens do come under the securities law."


SEC regulators are parsing through reams of new cryptocurrencies and digital assets to determine which qualify as securities under U.S. law and are subject to the agency's oversight.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/09/15/sec-chair-gensler-says-regulator-is-short-staffed.html