Commissioner Peirce faces an uphill battle. There is a fundamental trade-off between helping small businesses raise money and protecting small investors (which necessarily implies limiting their ability to make investments in small businesses). Given its current direction, the SEC is likely to prioritize the protection of small investors over the ability of small businesses to raise money. However, persistence is a virtue.

This is an important public statement by Commissioner Lee. She is working to establish a legal basis to require companies to disclose a greater amount of information as to ESG issues. Essentially, her argument is that the SEC should regard information as material if investors want the information, even if the information may not be relevant to the issuer's financial performance. Her analysis of the Securities Act provides a healthy counterpoint in a public dialogue with Commissioners Peirce…

That President Biden would direct the financial regulators to calculate the costs of achieving the EO's climate goals without specifying the means by which the goals are to be achieved suggests a certain futility to the exercise. Assuming that the financial regulators would, under any circumstances, have the requisite information to calculate the costs of building nuclear power plants, windmills and solar farms, how could they possibly do so without some guidance as to how many of each type…

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