WASHINGTON, D.C.—Dennis Kelleher, President, CEO and Cofounder of Better Markets, issued the following statement in connection with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) order limiting the information that can be collected by the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT):

“Markets and financial firms, including those who rip off investors, move at the 21^st Century speed of light while the SEC remains stuck in the 19^th Century horse and buggy age. Those financial firms – but not the SEC – have supercomputers that see, gather, and analyze virtually all the activity across the markets effectively in real time. The CAT would give the SEC similar capability, leveling the playing field and enabling the SEC to monitor and police the markets. It is a game-changing investor protection and financial stability tool that would enable the SEC for the first time to dramatically improve that ability to catch fraudsters and those who manipulate the markets. It’s no surprise that many in the financial industry do not want the SEC to have the ability to effectively monitor and police their conduct.

“Rather than putting the handcuffs on the lawbreakers, the SEC handcuffs itself when it weakens the CAT, as it just did by limiting the information that the CAT can collect. It’s as if lawbreakers were using the newest, fastest racing cars to get away from a crime scene and the SEC just deflated the tires and disabled the GPS in its chase car.

“The SEC admits this in its order when conceding that failing to collect this information will ‘negatively impact regulatory efficiency,’ which is just a fancy way of saying more crooks will get away and more investors will be ripped off. The SEC’s willingness to subordinate ‘efficiency’ here also shows how much that frequently touted priority is little more than a pretext for giving the industry what it wants. The industry’s claimed concern about investor privacy is also a pretext in their ongoing war to kill the CAT. Legitimate privacy concerns can be addressed in other ways that do not needlessly handcuff the SEC and help the lawbreakers. Rather than do that and strike the right balance, the SEC has weakened its ability to protect investors, markets, and financial stability.”

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