Remember Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi?” Don’t it always seem to go/ that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone … That, no doubt, is how many left-leaning Democrats are going to remember Mary Jo White, who announced Monday afternoon she would resign as chair from the Securities and Exchange Commission when President Obama leaves office.
White’s legacy is a mixed one. She pushed through a number of Dodd-Frank-related rules as well as investor-protection reforms, including requiring corporations to reveal the ratio separating the amount earned by their CEO to their median employee’s pay. But other mandates languished. One in particular was the SEC’s inaction on expanding the so-called fiduciary standard—the idea that brokers need to act in the best interests of their clients—even as the Department of Labor moved forward to increase protections for those saving via retirement accounts. Another was the failure to move forward on such matters as forcing companies to reveal the totality of their political spending. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for one, was furious and, last month, demanded that Obama replace White. The SEC chair, she said in a statement released last month, “is ignoring the SEC’s core mission of investor protection.”
Yes, White’s resignation was expected no matter who won the election. But her term doesn’t expire until 2019. And very soon, some of her critics on the left may well wish she stuck around. It’s all but assured that Warren will like White’s replacement—to be selected by the Trump administration—much less. Trump, after all, plans to dismantle parts of Dodd-Frank and is advised by a longtime opponent of expanding the fiduciary standard.
There’s something else worth noting about White. She knows Donald Trump very, very well. When Trump unsuccessfully sued biographer and journalist Timothy O’Brien for libel, White, then a lawyer with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, played a prominent role in the latter’s defense. That included Trump’s devastating deposition, where O’Brien’s legal team forced the then-star of The Apprentice to admit, among other things, that he lied about how much money he borrowed and how many people he employed. They even discovered Trump exaggerated a speaking fee, claiming he earned $1 million when the correct figure was $400,000.
So it might be too bad that White didn’t change her mind and stay at the SEC. Her tenure wasn’t paradise for the Wall Street–skeptical left, but she’s almost certainly better than whoever will get the job next.
