SEC’s Gary Gensler Eyes Crypto And Climate Change With Confirmation Official

Fox Business cites Research Fellow Richard Morrison on ESG:

ESG advocates are likely to try to stretch the definition of material as far as possible, said Richard Morrison, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank. But, he said Gensler could be more moderate than Lee.

“Gensler seems receptive to the ideas, but doesn’t seem to have the fire-in-the-belly motivation and energy as Lee,” Morrison told FOX Business. “I’m concerned he will stray from the SEC’s tradition of bipartisanship by using the agency’s regulatory powers to advance a liberal social agenda on issues such as climate change, political spending, and racial inequality,” the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said ahead of his vote against Gensler’s nomination. “The securities laws are not the appropriate vehicle to address social and cultural issues.”

Moreover, the ESG agenda overlaps with other agencies, he said. 

“For the environmental regulation, you have the EPA. You have the Council on Environmental Quality,” Morrison said. “For workplace discrimination, you have the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Even if the federal government should be doing all these things, it’s not clear the SEC should be involved.”

Click here to read more.