The US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday proposed policies that SEC Chair Paul Atkins framed as an effort to promote private market investments by retail investors—or everyday Americans —while also "protecting those investors from bad actors and fraud," but critics accused the Republican-dominated federal agency of serving…
Page F2From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 1 October 2026
THE SINGLE VOTE
SEC Hands Its Chair One Vote to Rewrite Wall Street, Calls It Protecting Everyday Americans
As it ran on the front
On September 4th, trade press flagged a rule moving through the Securities and Exchange Commission that would let Wall Street firms fund the politicians who decide where pension money gets invested. Two weeks later, on September 18th, a different kind of access went up for sale: watchdog groups sued over a Truth Social program letting subscribers pay as much as $100,000 a month for an early look at key decision-makers' posts before anyone else saw them.
By September 30th, the SEC had turned the same logic into policy. Chair Paul Atkins proposed opening private markets, big stock debuts and crypto to what the agency calls everyday Americans, framing the move as protection. Benjamin Schiffrin of Better Markets read the same filing differently: investors saving for college and retirement are being steered toward private assets that, he said, do not offer greater returns — only less disclosure. Schiffrin said Atkins talks about this as the "responsible retailization" of the private markets. The commission did not put that phrase on the filing itself; it is the phrase Schiffrin says Atkins reaches for when he talks about it.…
…(cont) Then, on October 1st, the mechanism underneath all of it came into view: a quiet rule change lets the SEC chair rewrite the commission's regulations alone, without a vote of the full commission. The agency that is supposed to referee how much an investor gets to see before money changes hands no longer needs a majority to decide what gets disclosed, or to whom. One signature now does what used to take a commission.
Line the three dates up and the gap is not abstract. A rule that used to need several commissioners to sign off now needs one. The pension fund sitting on the other end of both deals was not in either room: not the one casting the vote, not the one paying for the preview, just the one whose quarterly statement arrives later, listing less than it used to.
That is the shape of it, hon. The rules did not simply get looser. Fewer people got a say in how loose, and none of them answer to the retirement account the filing says it is protecting.
“They used to need a boardroom full of people to agree before they loosened a rule on your pension. Now it's one guy's signature, and he's calling that loosening protection. That's the con: dress up fewer votes as more safety, and your retirement account ends up holding the bag.”
“Paul Atkins is just giving everyday Americans the same shot Wall Street's had for years — more choice, more markets, more... look, "responsible retailization" is literally the phrase, so it's responsible, that's just how the word works. Did I just defend a rule by repeating the name they made up for it? That's not landing the way I wanted.”
The receipts
A quiet rule change could signal “the end of independent financial regulators” just as the SEC prepares to deregulate crypto, mega-IPOs, and corporate governance.
· Trump’s About To Let Wall Street “Pay To Play” With Your Pension from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Watchdogs Sue to Stop Wall Street's 'Pay-to-Play' Access to Trump Truth Posts from the morgue, 18 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.