ContextSpeech by Paul S. Atkins, Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Why it mattersA broad summary of the SEC Chair's first year: cooperation with the CFTC, easier public offerings and a narrower enforcement focus.
- Oversight of markets was split between the SEC and CFTC.
- Disclosure burdens deter companies from going public.
- Past enforcement focused on technical violations.
- Align SEC and CFTC definitions and oversight under a new MOU.
- Reform registered offerings and scale disclosure by company size.
- Rescind the climate disclosure rule and focus enforcement on fraud.
Read the speech summary
1. The founding idea and the framework around it
Addressing the New York economic club days before the 250th anniversary of the Republic, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins linked Jefferson's declaration and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, both from 1776, as expressions of one conviction: individuals should be trusted ahead of institutions. Jefferson owned a well-worn copy of Smith's book, and the founders' debates echoed Smith's themes: a government large enough to protect people but too small to shackle them. The founders, he said, knew the invisible hand would not preserve itself, so they built a light framework of clear rights, coherent rules and bounded public authority, more trellis than cage, along which prosperity could climb, producing the world's most prosperous and resilient capital markets. He asked whether today's stewards have the wisdom and restraint to preserve it.
2. Two and a half centuries of markets
He traced American enterprise from Tocqueville's praise of its spirit and Washington's view of commerce, through the 1792 buttonwood agreement among stockbrokers, nineteenth-century growth of New York, widening share ownership, the postwar boom and the 1980s return to limited government. Every crisis threatened US markets, he argued, but none broke them, because the bedrock of free enterprise held and Americans returned to first principles; the 1933 securities law aimed to preserve markets by restoring trust through transparency rather than replacing investors' judgment. He quoted Washington's remark that a commercially minded people can achieve almost anything and a former SEC chairman's point that prosperity has to be created before anyone can distribute it, and the Tocqueville idea that Americans are instinctively enterprising and generous. He cited de Soto on formal property systems and contrasted collectivist experiments that ended in poverty with a system that rewards risk and innovation, noting foreign World Cup visitors surprised by everyday American life, and warned that some local leaders now speak the language of control.
3. The SEC's ACT strategy
He said recent regulation drifted: rules served social goals, enforcement became a policy tool, disclosure was redirected toward what regulators found interesting, and digital-asset uncertainty pushed innovation overseas. The SEC's response is a three-part ACT strategy. Advance: Project Crypto modernises rules to let markets move on-chain and gives issuers certainty about when an asset is a security. Clarify: the SEC and the CFTC signed a memorandum aligning definitions and coordinating oversight, ending a gap in oversight between the two agencies. Transform: with listed companies down about 40% since the 1990s, the agency is proposing offering and filer-status reforms to scale disclosure to company size and maturity, and has proposed rescinding the prior climate disclosure rule, re-tying the rulebook to materiality. Initial submissions for traditional IPOs rose 70% from January to early June against 2024, and one June offering raised 85.7 billion dollars.
4. Children's accounts, enforcement and a closing image
He highlighted Trump Accounts, opening on 4 July for every child under 18: an IRA in the child's name, with family, friends and employers able to give up to 5 000 dollars a year, philanthropic top-ups for many low- and middle-income children and a one-time 1 000 dollars from the government for those born between 2025 and 2028; the SEC supports it through investor education. On enforcement, the agency has abandoned regulation by enforcement, prioritising fraud, manipulation and abuses of trust over case counts and record penalties, and plans a broad review of enforcement processes, only the second in its history. He closed by saying the task is not to uproot what predecessors built but to tend the trellis and safeguard the invisible hand, as regulators, builders, risk-takers and citizens, so that the Republic's promise lasts another quarter millennium. He also mentioned that foreign fans at the football tournament were praising everyday American life, from air conditioning to barbecue, as a present-day echo of Tocqueville, and noted that some local politicians in the city were speaking the language of control and warned that the same collapse followed every collectivist experiment.