THE SEC'S COMBATIVE GARY GENSLER
THE TWO-MINUTE VIDEO CLIP has a low-budget, jittery feel. Quick, clumsy transitions tee up self-consciously cheesy reenactments. The vibe is high school AV club - except for the clip's narrator. He looks like a stock photo of a bureaucrat, in a dark gray suit jacket and blue dress shirt. His wide-set eyes never look away from the camera; his hands never stop gesticulating.
The man is the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and as elevator music swells, a title screen reveals this to be another edition of "Office Hours With Gary Gensler." Normally, these short videos are upbeat explainers on topics from SPACs to offshore shell companies. But this is a special edition about the perils of celebrity-sponsored investment products. (Short summary: Be careful!)
Gensler shared the episode with his 250,000 Twitter followers on Oct. 3, 2022, and it was particularly special because it coincided with big news: The SEC had extracted a $1.26 million settlement from Kim Kardashian, related to the actress failing to disclose that she had been paid to plug a scammy cryptocurrency token on Instagram. Published at the outset of the Monday morning news cycle, the video had the desired effect: Media outlets from CNBC to the New York Post lapped it up. The SEC and Gensler appeared everywhere.
This story is from the December 2023 - January 2024 edition of Fortune US.
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This story is from the December 2023 - January 2024 edition of Fortune US.
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