SEC accidentally uploads Gary Gensler’s draft speech

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accidentally uploaded Gary Gensler’s draft speech on the “public good of disclosure“ complete with suggested tweaks and notes.

The speech, posted to the SEC’s website today, was prepared for the Peterson Institute for International Economics and archived by users online. It features internal comments that show edits on repetitive sentiment, “diplomatically helpful” suggestions, and general cuts to the speech. 

For instance, after a line about large financial institutions restructuring “in the face of a potential failure,” an edit suggests, “I strongly recommend that a sentence be placed here (or somewhere in the first part of the speech) to reassure markets that you are not making the speech because you think there is an imminent crisis” (emphasis ours). 

Another edit suggests, “It may be diplomatically helpful to acknowledge that we have had constructive dialogues with many regulators,” before highlighting that the UK’s Bank Of England has been “particularly constructive.”

Screenshots of the Gary Gensler draft speech edits taken by X user @SmaugPool.

Read more: Fake news: SEC thinks NFTs are securities

After describing a goal to help taxpayers avoid the brunt of a systemically important financial institution’s restructuring, the speech reads, “The best way to achieve that is through robust disclosures that meet market expectations, not just legal requirements.” This line is described as a, “Key sentence, Great!”

Overall, there are at least 44 various edits in the Gary Gensler speech uploaded by accident to the SEC website. The original link now displays, “Error 403: Forbidden.”

Another blunder from the SEC happened at the start of this year, when the SEC’s X (formerly Twitter) account was hacked and posted a fake Bitcoin ETF approval that ultimately preempted its actual approval. 

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