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Hi friend,
In a city soaked in special interest money, being independent and speaking truth to power often is not very popular. Standing up for consumers and investors, economic, social and racial justice, and financial stability (meaning no special treatment or bailouts for the country’s largest financial firms) threatens not just Wall Street’s biggest financial firms, but also their many Washington supporters. That’s why it can be very lonely fighting against those bending or breaking the laws and rules to favor special interests over the public interest. FTX being the most recent example.
While the crypto industry generally and FTX and its former CEO Sam Bankman Fried in particular were buying dozens of people and organizations with tens of millions of dollars, we have been a leading crypto critic and vocally opposed FTX, which wanted to radically and dangerously change the structure and operations of commodity clearing houses. Recognizing how important and influential Better Markets is (having participated in more than 125 rulemakings at the CFTC alone), FTX offered Better Markets “$1 million or more,” but only if we supported its Application at the CFTC – basically a bribe. Even though that is more than 25% of our annual budget, we refused to sell out and take FTX’s money, and we continued to aggressively oppose them, including in a face-to-face meeting with Sam Bankman Fried and his…
