BRUSSELS — The head of Wall Street’s top watchdog is “absolutely not” concerned about the body’s independence from the White House.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins told POLITICO in an interview that President Donald Trump has the power to oust the head of the body and its commissioners.
“It’s clear from the law and Supreme Court rulings that we’re part of the executive branch and the president can fire me and the other commissioners,” he said. “He’s [Trump] the head of the executive branch. So I think that goes without saying.”
His comments come amid Trump’s repeated attacks on the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, as well as his attempts to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the board.
Asked whether he has concerns about the SEC’s independence, Atkins said: “No. Absolutely not.”
But, he added: “As far as the SEC goes,” he is “confident we could do our job as we have been doing it now for 90 years.”
Atkins declined to provide an opinion on Trump’s attacks on Powell — the president has described the Fed chair as a “moron” and a “numbskull” — saying: “That’s another agency altogether. They can — Jay Powell and the president — work out those sorts of things.”
Crypto reserve
Atkins praised Trump for his plans to set up a strategic Bitcoin reserve and digital assets stockpile following a presidential executive order.
“The U.S. government has seized a lot of Bitcoin and other things. … I think it’s smart not to dump it on the market, frankly, and so I salute the efforts of the president and the Treasury Secretary [Scott Bessent] and others to address that issue.”
The SEC chair has unveiled an ambitious agenda for stablecoin regulation known as “Project Crypto,” which he described as a move away from a “head-in-the-sand” approach from the regulator toward the digital technology.
“The SEC needs to embrace change. And if you do the opposite … if you are not embracing it, then it goes offshore,” he said, citing the example of FTX, the crypto exchange which was headquartered in the Bahamas and collapsed in 2022.
Green standards
Atkins has made his dislike of EU rules for corporate sustainability reporting clear, criticizing them in a speech in Paris earlier this week.
He has also threatened to withdraw U.S. recognition of international accounting standards over the inclusion of sustainability in their methodology.
Asked whether he disagrees with the European Central Bank’s approach of factoring the risks posed by climate change into their policymaking, Atkins said: “Yes, in a word.”
“We’re not here to be environmental police or social police or whatever. That’s not our job. And if others want to do that, then that’s up to them,” he said.
Atkins said “it doesn’t matter what I believe” regarding his personal views on climate change, adding that the SEC’s position “long before me” was that climate change does not pose a risk to the orderly functioning of financial markets. “I’m just continuing with that. I agree with that position,” he said.
Enforcement agenda
Separately, Atkins defended the appointment of Meg Ryan, a judge, to the role of head of the SEC’s enforcement division. Her hire broke with a precedent of appointing someone with long experience in securities law.
But Atkins said critics are “people who are ignorant, frankly, of how things work.”
“Judges don’t come ready-made with knowledge of the securities world,” he said, adding that Ryan is “eminently qualified to take this position.”
Judges “learn it on the job, they apply their experience and their knowledge to the case at hand, and they study up and they’re smart people and that’s their job,” Atkins said.
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