There are, as you know, 100 U.S. Senators. None of them are in charge of the SEC, an independent agency. That has not stopped Sen. Elizabeth Warren, however, from her ongoing, intense and quite public criticism of SEC Chair Mary Jo White for basically not running the SEC in the precise manner that Sen. Warren says she would run it.
Sen. Warren’s pointed criticism resurfaced again this week at a Senate Banking Committee general oversight hearing in which Chair White testified. This time, Warren’s ire was directed at an SEC initiative designed to address investor “information overload,” i.e., “the phenomenon in which ever-increasing amounts of disclosure make it difficult for an investor to wade through the volume of information she receives.” Warren asserted that this initiative was intended to “mak[e] life easier for big companies and harder for investors” and was a waste of the agency’s resources. Chair White strongly disagreed, stating that Warren was mischaracterizing the initiative.
