“Crypto-friendly” “Cryptomom” SEC commissioner Hester Pierce is absolutely not who you think she is

There have been a bunch of positive articles swirling around about ‘Cryptomom’ Hester Peirce. She’s an commissioner at at the SEC and has been floated as a replacement for Gary Gensler by some in the public with the appearance of being “good for crypto”. Now, a small bit of critical thinking, why is it what this woman is the only potential replacement or essentially the only other SEC commissioner who has been getting interviews and the limelight cast on her? We are not really hearing about even on other SEC commissioner to any significant degree. Almost, like she’s a media/government plant.

Peirce previously served as the director of the Financial Markets Working Group at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. What is the Mercatus Center? Well…oddly enough no one really knows. They are supposed to be a think tank but they wield ABSOLUTE ENORMOUS power in government. And Peirce received 98% of her earnings from the organization. WSJ wrote a piece about it. Let’s go through them.

In 2001, the new Bush White House sought suggestions for government regulations to kill or modify. A small think tank called the Mercatus Center named 44 it didn’t like. Ultimately, 14 of the 23 rules the White House chose for its “hit list” to eliminate or modify were Mercatus entries — a record that flabbergasted Washington lobbying heavyweights. Mercatus hosts workshops on Capitol Hill to court congressional staffers who delve into regulatory issues. After a withering Mercatus critique, the Environmental Protection Agency changed its mind about the benefits of a rule that required utilities to kill fewer fish with their power plants. Mercatus’s rise owes much to the oil-and-gas company Koch Industries Inc., (pronounced “coke”), a privately owned company in Wichita, Kan., that contributes heavily to Republican causes and candidates. Members of the Mercatus “Founder’s Circle” of contributors in 2002 — those who give at least $10,000 — included ExxonMobil Corp., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors Corp., Gillette Co., Microsoft Corp., Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Co., the New York Stock Exchange and Pfizer Inc. The Chamber of Commerce recently donated $50,000 to Mercatus to research tort reform.

Wall Street Journal also describes Mercatus “as a coordinating center for lobbyists trying to block a flurry of regulations.” Congressional records show they routinely cited in over a dozen hearings over the last two years by lawmakers seeking to roll back regulations on business interests since last year.

Peirce is also a member of the Federalist Society. Per the WH Post, the Federalist Society “has evolved into the de facto gatekeeper for right-of-center lawyers aspiring to government jobs and federal judgeships under Republican presidents.”. It vetted President Donald Trump**’s list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees**; in March 2020, 43 out of 51 of Trump’s appellate court nominees were current or former members of the society(per NY Times).

The Washington Post wrote that the Federalist Society had reached an “unprecedented peak of power and influence.” Of the current nine members of the Supreme Court of the United States, six are current or former members of the organization—Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. Politico wrote that the Federalist Society “has become one of the most influential legal organizations in history—not only shaping law students’ thinking but changing American society itself by deliberately, diligently shifting the country’s judiciary to the right.”

Peirce also went on to work on changing regulation post-2008. Confirmed per Reuters, Peirce worked as part of Senator Richard Shelby’s staff on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and focused on how regulators implemented the 2010 Dodd-Frank(reforms to fix banking sector after 2008 collapse) Wall Street reform law and helped provide oversight of the SEC. And yet somehow**, she’s later come out a a critic of the Dodd-Frank regulations,** which she was so instrumental in creating. Of course people can change their minds, but it’s starting to look downright psychotic(not an insult, just the reality) the way she even went and **wrote a whole book on “**Dodd-Frank: What It Does and Why It’s Flawed”. Either she changes her mind way too easily, she’s actually needs psychiatric attention OR someone is paying serious bills. And her actions wants to remove the protections that got us to 2008 as stated by CHR “Rather than rely on the Dodd-Frank Act-mandated requirements, she wants to do away with the provisions altogether.” Peirce was seen as “instrumental” at the start of Trump’s term in his efforts to repeal or roll-back Dodd-Frank reforms.

In another interesting twist, in the chaos of the Robinhood and Citadel(essentially the securities broker for Robinhood), there was a vote at the SEC for greater hedge fund market transparency. Peirce was the only head to vote “NO” for greater hedge fund transparency. And here’s what’s really fishy. Peirce used to work at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering(now WilmerHale), and guess who WilmerHale worked as a legal counsel for: Citadel.

Interestingly, WilmerHale is also a lobbying group as well, no surprises there. OpenSecrets has their profile that shows them having doing many Millions in lobbying every year, between Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and later WilmerHale post 2008. They of course have their history of representing banks like Barclays and JP Morgan in cases of bribes and insider trading/market manipulation, which is actually very similar to the Citadel situation of using darkpools and/o routing traders to a third-party maker who does who-knows-what with the information.

TLDR: Hester Peirce is a cooporate plant with the only purpose as removing as much regulation as possible, so that her lobbyist donors can do whatever they want with no scrutiny or oversight and continue to screw over average investors and individuals in even worse ways than they currently do with the few laws that limit them only to a small degree. It just so happens that that also involves pushing back against whatever regulations are proposed to crypto as well. But she is absolutely not on our side, just do her cooperate donor’s bidding.

​

P.S. On a very interesting point, Mercatus seems to have DEEP hands in the media as well as it is exceedingly difficult to find critical or even just factual articles about their activities, background and ongoings. I’d love to do an expose on them but it’s take weeks at least and I am not exaggerating when I say it’s at serious risk of upsetting some of literally the most powerful people in the world. You can do your own research, but seriously…be careful with what you do with the info.