YouSaid · the spoken record

Gary Gensler

lines on the record: 29
first: 2021-11-18
most recent: 2021-11-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Know, I do enjoy it, David. I think, look, everybody's going to find their passion. I was intrigued and interested in finance. I was my twin brother and I guess got a gift of math and numbers. But I was also always felt like that what we can do to leave our world a better place. You know, when we get to the end of our lives and look back, it's our family, it's our loved ones, it's our friends. And to me, can we leave the world a little bit better off? And that's what motivates me in this job. Can we do something that's better for working families or people starting out in their life saving and investing for their future and tip the scales a little bit in their favor away from the folks in the middle?”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you're kind to say that. I've been a lifelong runner and I learned a little bit of athleticism. That decision, that fateful decision to go to University of Pennsylvania because my twin brother was there was also I ended up being a cockswain for crew and I learned from coach Ted Nash this incredible sense of he was an Olympic oarsman and Olympic gold medalist this incredible sense of that it's important to think about our body as well so I try even to this day I try to still get out and run I'm not as good a runner as I once was I've done a fair amount of biking in my life and mountain climbing and trekking my eldest daughter and my youngest daughter and I have all sort of trekked together my middle daughter the anthropologist doesn't like that bit but these are some of the things I try to do”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, I wouldn't probably want to disclose any of that, but that's a would be a pretty unusual precedent, SEC chair. I mean, I know my predecessor may have played golf or something, but that's not happening here.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We work very closely with the U.S. Department of Treasury, with the other financial regulators. Of course, our sibling market regulator, the CFTC, and the bank regulators and the Federal Reserve. And I'm a member of something called the Financial Stability Oversight Council, again, something Congress set up after the 08 crisis. And yet we're an independent agency where if we write a rule, and certainly if we do enforcement actions, we don't check in with the White House. And that's why Congress's will. Congress wrote the law that way. And so there's a certain independence from that daily back and forth with.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually think David, it's pretty clear my predecessor, Jay Clayton, said this more than once that he thought it was pretty clear that many of these tokens, maybe actually his words where he hadn't really seen many that weren't securities. What we've asked the trading platforms, the lending platforms, the other various venues to come in, to work with us, to get registered under the securities laws because if a platform has 50 or some of them 500 tokens on their platform, probabilities are they're not awe non-securities.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's clear if you're using this new technology to raise money from others and those other people, the public are anticipating profits based on the efforts, that brings it into this what's called an investment contract. Congress back to 1933 and 1934, Congress painted with a very broad brush, David. They painted with a broad brush to protect the public from fraud when people were raising money from the public and the public isn't anticipating a profit based on those individuals raising the money. So look, it depends on the facts and circumstances. It depends obviously on each individual token, but many of these, maybe even the majority of them are tokens raising money from the public where the public's anticipation. Profits based on the efforts of the others, the promoters.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One, when a president asks you to do something, it's really hard to say no. Let me just say that, but it's also just an incredible privilege and an honor. I've been around capital markets my whole adult life, starting, as I said, as a 21-year-old at Goldman Sachs and here some four decades later, I've asked once again to serve, it's a hard thing to say no to. I will say this, though, being a professor at MIT is an incredible experience. The vibrancy of that student body, the faculty, the staff. But even there, I was studying the intersection of finance and technology. I was spending a fair amount of time on that intersection and the new innovations around fintech and then more precisely around artificial intelligence and also cryptocurrencies sort of that. It started with the Satoshi Nakamoto white paper 13 years ago.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, one's a remarkable artist, a political cartoonist, an artist. One's a PhD in culture anthropology, and one's working in immigration law.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm not sure I did it all that well, but I was actually off the grid. So we lost Francesca in 2006. She at first had cancer when we were, I guess you'd say kids. I mean, she wasn't but 30 when she first had cancer and we were dating. We were blessed to go on and get married, have three wonderful daughters, but we did lose Francesca to cancer in 2006. And I was kind of off the grid. And for three or four years, pretty much stayed-home dad.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're both remarkable organizations. The CFTC is, of course, smaller. And the CFTC is interesting. It was set up to oversee commodity futures or derivatives for corn and wheat. And then in the 1970s, it was expanded to energy products. And yes, interest rate products and even the S&P 500 stock future. So these derivative products, but an innovation had come up called swaps. And swaps, which are very similar to futures, another form of derivative, had not been regulated. And in the middle of that crisis, the 2008 crisis, credit default swaps and swaps, led to some of the instability in our markets. So working with Tim Geithner, working with Mary Shapiro at the SEC, working with all the members. Of Congress actually across the aisle, we cobbled together reforms for this swap market.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I had been working on then's Senator Clinton's campaign, the 2008 campaign, as a senior advisor. So I was particularly honored that he reached out and gave me the opportunity to serve once again.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first thing I did along with a colleague from the Treasure Department is we wrote a book we thought of it as a common sense book on investing, which really was promoting the use of low-cost index funds for people that have just their retirement savings and saving for their futures. So that was the first thing. And then I started working with Paul Sorbanes on that which you said became this accounting law called Sarbanes Oxley.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When President Clinton won a second term, an opportunity arose, I guess I competed for it, but an opportunity arose and I went down to the Clinton Treasury as an assistant secretary for financial markets. And I haven't looked back. It's been a terrific 24 years”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My time there was, I spent 18 years there. I did a number of things, not just this merger and acquisition area, but I went to the trading side. I went and helped run part of the back office. It was really just a remarkable experience and opportunity. But I felt some connection to public service, maybe as a kid that was the class treasurer and lost for senior class president. I always had this connection and I thought public service was something if I had the opportunity. I wanted to be part of. Well, one of my mentors, one of my bosses at Goldman Sachs, Bob Rubin, had been chosen by President Clinton first to be his national economic advisor and later as Treasury Secretary and Secretary Ruben knew I'd be a soft touch for service.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I joined a group called the Merger and Acquisition Area. It was about a dozen people headed by Steve Friedman and Jeff Blasi at the time, who you might have later known. And then it grew. It was throughout the 1980s, grew rapidly.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Rob went there as well. We both went to Wharton. I had a fateful decision. He had gotten in a little earlier than I, and I was accepted. We were both kind of math kids. And I was accepted to MIT. My twin brother had gone to Wharton already accepted. And then on a fateful day, I decided to go the same place. It's worked out for me. And I ended up at MIT many years later.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, neither of my parents went to college. In fact, my grandfolks didn't, three of them didn't even go to high school, but my dad started a small business out of with his mustering out pay after World War II. And while I never had more than, I think three dozen employees, it was a vetting business in the bars of Baltimore and so forth. It sent all of us kids to college. It helped pay down the mortgage over the years. We lived a good life around this small business and through the community of Pikesville that I grew up in.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there were others involved as well, and I learned working for a senator. I mean, it was all there. If it went well, it was theirs, but if it went pear-shaped, of course, it was maybe the staffs. But yes, I do know it. It was after Enron and WorldCon failed. And so Congress stepped in and said they had to change this up the game, up the rigor with regard to auditing in the United States.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so Congress last year said, all right, enough is enough. And they set a three-year clock in place, a three-year clock 2021's year one. If we can't work this out, if the auditing firms of these China related companies don't open up their work papers, then what Congress said, then we have to suspend trading that these companies should not be able to access U.S. markets through our stock exchanges and the like.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You and I are both bottomer boys, so we both remember fondly Paul Sarbanes, who was our senator here in Maryland for, well, I think 30 years. And Paul and Republican Mike Oxley came together in 2002, and President George W. Bush worked with them when something called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. And there was another basic bargain. That basic bargain was if you wanted to raise money from the public, not only did you have to provide financials that were audited, but your auditor had to be subject to inspection. Basic bargain. So to your story is nearly 20 years later, Companies from 50 plus jurisdictions have allowed their books and records to be looked at, inspected. In essence, the auditors to be audited. Two jurisdictions have not China and Hong Kong”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Markets work best when we have rules of the road. I think that those of us at the SEC are entrusted to ensure that the markets as the best they can are free of fraud, free of manipulation, that you as investors get to decide.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We hear from market participants that helps us be better at what we do. We hear from advocates all across the markets and all across the political spectrum. That helps the five of us in the commission to hear from the public. So whether it's a chief executive officer or it's somebody who's buying the first 50 shares of stock in a company, we benefit from hearing from folks. And my call list or made public on a monthly basis, you'll see that some CEOs get in touch. They want to say something about maybe it's about equity market structure. Maybe it's about climate risk disclosure. Maybe it's about what we talked about earlier about SPACs or crypto. And we don't have to necessarily agree. We try to, when we disagree to agreeably, as my uncle Norman used to say. But it's helpful to hear from people in the markets”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rather than our returns. And so we're trying to think that through it's not just gamification, it's a little bit more than that. It's whether there's a conflict between the app and our investment returns.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if I could take just a step back, we live in the 2020s in a new digital age where applications on our phones can use massive amount of data and then predict our behavior. And this is true outside of finance and inside of finance. Outside of finance, the streaming apps figured out a while ago that I'm kind of a rom-comp type of guy. That's figured out. Now in this space, whether it's a robo advisor or a brokerage app, if they figure out by giving you David Rubenstein a certain signal, a certain color, a certain prompt, a behavioral prompt that you might trade more or you might buy a higher revenue product for them, therein lies a potential conflict. What do we do when the digital algorithms are maximizing for the company's revenues?”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Having said that, we're looking at how we can bring some greater disclosure, transparency, and deal with some of those inherent conflicts.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I think that we at the SEC are committed to be technology neutral and innovations like special purpose acquisition companies, which actually have been around for quite some time. It's just that they took off in the last two years, and there's been hundreds of them, as you know, and well over $100 billion raised through these fundamentally blank check companies. What we're looking at is how do we guard the public, not just in disclosure, but also there's very significant fees. The sponsors generally take about 20% as a promote. They have two years to invest the money. They're encouraged to invest the money because they want to get that 20%. And then what sort of conflicts does that set up? What due diligence are they doing when they're buying those target companies?”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's important, I think, an agency like ours to constantly bring up to date our rule set. So I would say it is a central concern, if I can use a different word than you did, about are regular investors, and we've seen an increase of retail participation, but are regular investors as well as the big institutions having efficient markets? And are they getting what's called best execution? We wrote a rule years ago about that you're supposed to get best execution out of your broker. And is that happening when, as you said, a few wholesalers are buying the order flow and a lot of that's getting concentrated around a few wholesalers?”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a real challenge, David, for across our government to stay up with the remarkable innovations. The last time we updated our rules for the stock markets, the equity markets was in a significant way, was in 2005. In 16 years later, those rules that may have been fit for purpose then, are they really ready for the 2020s? nearly half of our stock market does not trade in the transparent what's called lit exchanges like the new york stock exchange or nasdaq but they're in dark pools or they're in wholesalers so i've asked staff what can we do to update these markets for the 2020s given the rapid change of technology”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, we talk about it as a three part mission investor protection, which embodies much of what you just said, facilitating capital formation, companies that are raising money, entrepreneurs, but also those of us who are homeowners and take out a mortgage. We are issuers as well. We're raising money. And then that which is in the middle, fair, orderly, and efficient markets. Investors, capital formation, and then the markets in the middle.”
2021-11-18 · The David Rubenstein Show · Gary Gensler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source