Koch Fronted Regulatory Hit Woman Edges Closer to Seat on SEC

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Democrats sitting on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee at Tuesday’s confirmation hearing to take testimony from President Obama’s two nominees for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must have felt like they were having an out of body experience — listening to the human personification of billionaire Charles Koch’s money aping his Ayn Rand, anti-regulatory double-talk from a witness seat. What had to be particularly nauseating to them was that this nominee was sent to them by President Obama who ran as a Democrat on a platform of hope and change. While the political makeup of the SEC is prescribed by law, so that one of these two nominees had to be a Republican, why pick this particular Republican?

On October 20, 2015, President Obama announced that his nominee to fill a Republican seat on the SEC would be Hester Peirce, a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Financial Markets Working Group at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. According to SourceWatch, the Mercatus Center “was founded and is funded by the Koch Family Foundations.”