17th April 2023 - The SEC.

tl;dr

The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) might be heading for a shake-up.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

A small pull-back below the 30-handle doesn’t change the current narrative though the leveraged children are starting to get excited by it, as well as the techies. The latter are calling for a support level of $29,600. That means nothing in the real world to real investors, but the leveraged shorts are expected to overreach themselves if that level is breached to the downside. That will – as always – increase the risk of a short squeeze higher.

Occasional Series – G20 Finance Chiefs

My oh my.

This is a sad indictment of the ruling technocratic elite. If anyone has any desire to reduce the tax burden on hard-working, private sector employees I know where I could start on cutting wages, abolishing travel expenses, and removing fat, (sometimes) tax-free, gold-plated pensions.

…

Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman summed up the meeting’s conclusions on the topic of cryptos:

“Any action on crypto assets will have to be global.”

A poor start as regulation is already in place in some of the more enlightened regions of the crypto world, especially the EU. And the EU does not need permission from the G20. Sitharaman explained:

“The discussion on crypto assets highlighted that it couldn’t be confined to one part of the world. Its implications can impact both emerging & developed economies. Thus, global policy responses to crypto-assets are required.”

Which is a line of thinking that can be applied to most areas of human endeavour and leads to anti-liberal concepts such as the creation of a world government, and a desire to ban everything.

This is the bit that really got my goat:

“The way in which we are seeing this pan out during our presidency is the IMF’s paper is being discussed. FSB’s paper also will be taken up, and a synthesis paper will be prepared from the IMF paper and the FSB paper both put together.”

This meeting of the great and good sat down to consider two technocratic discussion papers. The outcome of this meeting – the sole action point - is to create a third technocratic discussion paper as a synthesis of the first two.

But then it gets worse.

The deadline for combining the two papers is … September or October, at which point further discussions will take place:

“ … (at the) end of the day, we will see a roadmap being readied on how and what kind of understanding the members of the G20 have in this, and it can be taken further forward on specific actions of regulation as and when the G20 takes a call on it.”

My oh my.

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Meanwhile wealth creators crack on with doing actual work that creates actual employment and actual wealth that is then taxed to allow utterly pointless junkets like this to take place.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – The SEC

Congressman Warren Davidson has tweeted:

“To correct a long series of abuses, I am introducing legislation that removes the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and replaces the role with an Executive Director that reports to the Board (where authority resides). Former Chairs of the SEC are ineligible.”

I have previously mused on the surprising situation that Gary Gensler, Chair of the SEC, can be so publicly at odds with some of the SEC Commissioners. I don’t know many jobs in which frequent and public statements of dissent with your boss don’t rapidly result in a change in behaviour, or a change in employment status.

Readers know that Gary has been misunderstood by many in the crypto industry – he is not the villain as he is frequently portrayed. But that doesn’t mean I wholly support his approach to regulating cryptos.

Nothing personal Gary, but if this legislation reaches the statute books (a very big if) then that will lead to a much healthier regulatory environment around cryptos, a necessary though not sufficient condition for wholesale adoption by institutional investors.