US (AMERICANS FOR FINANCIAL REFORM) : WALL STREET wants less transparency and more of your retirement money.

 

Wall Street has a simple plan for making more money: disclose less, take bigger risks, and make sure someone else eats any losses. Right now, the Securities and Exchange Commission is helping make that possible with a sweeping deregulatory agenda that would make public companies less transparent, weaken investor protections, and open more of our financial system to opaque and risky investments. The people who will ultimately be left holding the bag are workers saving for retirement and the public pension funds that teachers, firefighters, nurses, and other civil servants depend on. But let’s be real, everyone pays the price if, when the guardrails come off, corporations get taxpayer bailouts to survive because Wall Street recklessness risks the stability of the entire economy. Congress can stop this reckless SEC. Sign and send a direct message demanding they protect investors, defend strong disclosure requirements, and stop the Trump administration’s dangerous Wall Street deregulation agenda now. SIGN & SEND One SEC proposal would exempt more than 80% of public companies from important requirements, including disclosures about the ratio between CEO and worker pay, say-on-pay votes, and auditor reviews of internal financial controls designed to prevent accounting fraud. Another would let companies report financial results every 6 months instead of every quarter, giving investors less timely information about what is happening inside the companies holding their money. At the same time, Wall Street and its allies are pushing to expand private markets where investments are harder to evaluate and risks harder to see. That kind of opacity makes it easier for speculation to run wild, including around booming sectors like artificial intelligence. When the bubble bursts, Wall Street executives should not get to walk away richer while retirement funds and working people absorb the losses. The SEC is also proposing changes that would allow smaller and less-seasoned companies to raise money while weakening longstanding disclosure and state-law safeguards. Those protections exist because investors need reliable information before putting their savings at risk. Tearing them down makes Wall Street’s job easier while making everyone else’s investments more dangerous. And the SEC wants to rescind climate-related disclosure requirements even as climate change creates growing financial risks for companies, investors, workers, and communities. Investors deserve information about material risks that could affect the companies they own. Hiding risk does not make it disappear. It just makes it easier to dump the consequences on someone else. When corporations and investment firms are allowed to operate with fewer disclosures and weaker guardrails, they keep the profits when things go well while shifting more of the risk onto everyone else. Demand Congress take action to stop the dangerous deregulatory path of the SEC by sending your message now. Thank you for standing up for workers, retirees, and a financial system that serves the public. -Natalia. Natalia Renta (she/her) Associate Director, Corporate Governance and Power Americans for Financial Reform Support the campaign

Americans for Financial Reform