No official has been more publicly outspoken recently about regulator staffing shortages than SEC chair Gary Gensler. Complaints of this sort date back to at least 2009.
What they're saying: “We’ve got an IPO boom, we have a SPAC boom, we have cryptocurrencies to deal with ... [and] China," Gensler told CNBC last week.
- It echoes comments at a recent congressional hearing: Gensler said he needs more people to deal with the thousands of new digital assets that have cropped up.
Our thought bubble, via Axios' Felix Salmon: Between (a) Gensler's maximalist view of financial regulation and what counts as a security, (b) his desire to regulate the broad financial system, and (c) his deep understanding of inter-regulator politics from his time running the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, it’s clear why he would move aggressively to claim as much land as he can before the other regulators even show up.