Gary Gensler steps down as chair of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

@whowasthatmaskedman He left before his inevitable ejection next year. I find the lack of independence of important administrative departments from the executive quite worrying.

@SunshineGirl The pattern will be repeated through the government sector. Those who despise Trump and those who have disagreed with him publicly or have public political positions not aligned with him. As well as those confident of their ability to move a career forward elsewhere. Remember how many experts are predicting negative outcomes under the coming administration. Few want that record on their resume..😷

@kickasspoliceguy And clean water...😷

@SunshineGirl You should watch the movie The wolf of Wall Street if you haven’t already.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Agencies need to be properly funded and resourced to keep up with the industry. Gensler did a pretty good job in a fiendishly complex area of the market.

@SunshineGirl The fatal flaw is all it takes is lobbyists to convince a few people in Congress to pass a "modernized" bill to make it impossible for someone like Gensler to do their jobs effectively.

@Ferric67
Did you vote Republican as well?

@swirlie shamefully I did not vote at all.
Normally I vote on election days.
But this past Election Day I was stuck at work later than normal. On top of that, my boss's mother had just passed...so, after work I went to the wake. Before I knew it, it was past nine pm.
I had planned to go vote, my day just got away from me.
Now, I get it why early voting was such a hot topic.
FYI, I am a registered independent (which does not give me the right to vote in a primary...which I think is fugazzi)
Anyhow, that's my situation...probably more information than you wanted. But it's the truth

@Ferric67
Well, thank you for clearing the air about that because we were all talking about your earlier today, so I'll be sure to let the others know where you stand now.

I was reading some interesting American political data where it was finally revealed that if only 250,000 more Democrats had gotten out to vote among the 3 swing-States-only in the USA, that Harris would have won the election by a slim margin, whereas Trump won the election by that same slim margin. He didn't win because all the Republicans showed up to vote in America, he won because the vast majority of Democrats didn't show up to vote against him.

I've had some pretty heated discussions on this website since the election with a few people who like yourself, openly admitted that they never even voted in the election, let alone voted for Trump and his flying circus act .

My argument has always been that if you hold a US Passport, you have a civic duty to at least show up and vote, or to at least cast a vote by mail for whatever Party turns your crank. Voting is a very personal issue and your reason for voting for a particular candidate is quite frankly, nobody's business. But what is EVERYBODY'S business, is the apathetic attitude of those Americans who don't show up to vote.

To NOT vote at all, but then turn around and say that it is one's Constitutional Right to hold a US Passport as a taxpaying American Citizen, is precisely why America's version of Democracy has failed. It failed when the vast majority of those US Passport holders didn't perform their civic duty.

Not voting in a Presidential Election is what caused America's version of Democracy to fail the taxpaying citizens of the United States and not voting is what failed the rest of the world as well.

America tried to lead by example but fell flat on it's face when the majority of America's US Passport-holding citizens never bothered to show up to vote in a timely fashion ..and now it's too late to even offer seemingly valid excuses for not voting.

The reason the US government imposed the draft onto it's citizens during WWII and the Vietnam War, was because Americans didn't show up and enlist voluntarily to serve their country. The same thing can be said for this past Presidential Election. The reason a fascist autocrat was elected as President of the United States was because American citizens didn't voluntarily show up to vote which would have otherwise stopped Trump from succeeding.

@jehova My advice as an amateur economist is invest only in useful goods and services. Think for one moment about what crypto is. It serves no useful purpose (beyond enriching those who control it) and it distorts and subverts genuine economic activity.

@swirlie Absolutely. Cryptocurrency very effectively encapsulates his zero sum vision of the world. But there really are very few winners in this strange new world.