Testimony of John C. Coates IV Before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment on Proposed Securities Law Reforms

29 Pages Posted: 17 Dec 2011 Last revised: 21 Dec 2011

See all articles by John C. Coates, IV

John C. Coates, IV

Harvard Law School; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Date Written: December 14, 2011

Abstract

Amid an economic downturn caused in part by financial deregulation, it is odd to most people outside the Beltway that Congress should be actively considering (and indeed have passed in the House) a raft of proposal for more financial deregulation. Yet the politics for both parties require efforts to generate job growth, without spending or taxing, and some deregulatory proposals may plausibly do that. The following testimony takes up three themes related to pending proposals to revise securities laws to (among other things) deregulate widely held but unlisted companies and banks, to permit unregistered "crowdfinancing," and to loosen constraints on small public offerings: (1) the proposals under review all raise the same general trade-off, which is best understood not as economic growth vs. investor protection, but as increasing economic growth by reducing the costs of capital-raising vs. reducing economic growth by raising the costs of capital; (2) no one can with any degree of certainty predict whether any proposal on its own, much less in combination, will increase job growth or reduce it, because the evidence that would allow one to make that prediction with confidence is not available; and (3) the proposals are thus all best viewed as proposals for risky but potentially valuable experiments, and should be treated as such – with an open mind, but also with caution and care. A general suggestion follows: any proposal should contain a sunset, with the SEC directed to study the effects of the proposal during a "test" phase, and authorized to re-adopt the proposals if their benefits exceed their costs. Specific comments on each bill are contained in Part III of the testimony.

JEL Classification: G18, G21, G24, G28, G30, G32, G38, K22

Suggested Citation

Coates, John C., Testimony of John C. Coates IV Before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment on Proposed Securities Law Reforms (December 14, 2011). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1973258 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1973258

John C. Coates (Contact Author)

Harvard Law School ( email )

1575 Massachusetts
Hauser 406
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

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