Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you, Barbara [Van Allen], for your generous introduction. Before I offer a few reflections, I must note the standard disclaimer that the views I express here today are my own as Chairman and do not necessarily reflect those of the SEC as an institution or of my fellow Commissioners.

First, let me begin by expressing what a profound privilege it is to speak to the Economic Club of New York. Of course, this occasion is rendered especially meaningful-and even, serendipitously, a greater honor-by its timing, as we stand mere days away from the 250th anniversary of our Republic. Such a momentous occasion calls not only for celebration, but also for reflection on the great deeds of the past, and a renewed resolve to confirm that the spirit of 1776 remains our animating force today.

So, I do not take lightly the moment in which I stand before you, nor the duty ahead of me to adequately honor our extraordinary Nation, its courageous pioneers, and its storied history-a duty, yes, but for me, really a delight.

1776: Two Documents, One Idea

Today, the country that we call home stands squarely on the shoulders of the most consequential year in modern history. The epoch of 1776 did not merely mark the birth of a nation; it was the year that the grand idea behind it took political form. One so potent and so threatening to entrenched power that the band of men who dared to permanently endorse it on a piece of parchment pledged their very lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to its defense.

For the architects of this order were not timid reformers seeking a few modest amendments to an antiquated system; they were revolutionaries declaring an uncompromising extrication from it.

A quarter millennium ago, they announced to a king-and thus to the world-that our rights are undeniable-that they are not subject to the will of princes or parliaments, but sacred gifts from the hand of God.

Chief among these rights, our forebears proclaimed, was the right to govern themselves; to forge their own destiny through industry and enterprise; to wager everything on an idea to enjoy the fruit of their endeavor safe in their property; to pursue happiness-a happiness far more profound than our simple vernacular definition of "joy" or "contentment." Instead, they invoked by that term the classical ideal of human flourishing, achieved through virtuous activity over the course of one's life.

At the heart of our Founding Fathers' revolution stood an idea-one that found its fullest expression in two fateful documents, crafted an ocean apart but together in time in 1776: one penned in the summer heat of Philadelphia, the other in the intellectual winds of Edinburgh. Thomas Jefferson brilliantly articulated the justification of the Continental Congress for becoming a nation. Adam Smith described the way that such a nation could summon wealth from scattered effort. The authors never met, yet their ideas were inseparable, and their contemporaneous works rested on the same conviction: trust the individual, not the institution.

On the far side of two and a half centuries, the question before us today is not whether that idea "worked." History has certainly answered that in the affirmative. Rather, it is whether we, as stewards of this nation and its institutions, have the wisdom, restraint, and the resolve to preserve it.

The Invisible Hand and the Visible Framework

Thomas Jefferson was no stranger to Adam Smith's philosophy-he was, in fact, a student of it, evidenced by the well-worn copy of The Wealth of Nations contained in his library, from which he gleaned wisdom that he shared freely with friends and correspondents.[1]

It is little wonder, then, that our founding documents, in many respects, reflect Smith's central themes that were debated at the time: that government must not grow infinitely. That it should be sizeable enough to protect its people yet small enough not to shackle them. And that its purpose, above all, is to set them free to pursue their own prosperity-and in so doing, to propel the nation's prosperity-to unleash what Smith immortalized as "the invisible hand."

Yet the Founders understood that this principle, however true or trustworthy, was not self-preserving. They knew that concentrated power-whether lodged in a crown, in a parliament, or in a bureaucracy-would characteristically constrain it. So, they built a framework around it as light as prudence would permit.

Carefully constructed on the cornerstones of clear rights, coherent rules, and public authority granted and bounded by the people, our forebears' framework amounted to more of a trellis than a cage-something along which prosperity could climb.

For two and a half centuries, that trellis, rightly tended, has liberated the invisible hand to lift a people-indeed, even an entire nation-and, in so doing, has built the most prosperous, innovative, and resilient capital markets in the world.

250 Years of the Invisible Hand at Work

Ludwig von Mises wrote that the market economy needs no apologists or propagandists. That "it can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's Cathedral: If you seek his monument, look around.[2] Well, on the cusp of a quarter millennium, I believe that it is fitting not only to look around, but also to look behind.

From its earliest days, America exhibited a bold spirit of enterprise, which the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville credited as the primary reason for "its rapid progress, its force, [and] its greatness.[3] Likewise, George Washington, who took the presidential oath here in Manhattan, underscored the power of a commercial and enterprising spirit to propel a nation. In 1784, he wrote that a people driven by "the spirit of commerce," and determined to "pursue their advantages, may achieve almost anything."[4]

A few years later, not far from where we are gathered, America's unrivaled capital markets were born almost simultaneously with the nation itself. Not by the edict of government design, but by the ethos of American ingenuity.

In 1792, beneath the shade of a buttonwood tree, two dozen stockbrokers gathered to assemble a simple agreement-less than a hundred handwritten words-establishing a system that, while certainly not perfect, would facilitate the flow of capital for generations. Free people, organizing themselves to do what our Founders trusted that they would: create the conditions for capital to flow-and for prosperity to climb that trellis.

In the decades that followed, within a framework of shared rules and solemn covenants, Americans set the great wheel of ambition turning, and from it, capital flowed.

As this productive symbiosis between capital and creativity increased, the unleashing of human ingenuity gave rise to rapid industrial revolution-and to this great American city, whose history stands as a testament to the power of private investment and free enterprise. The towers that stand out against the sky, the railways that fan out from Grand Central and Pennsylvania Station to the rest of the country, and the harbors, factories, and financial institutions that made New York the Empire City were not conjured by directive, but by initiative-by free people willing to stake their savings on a nation still in formation.

By the turn of the twentieth century, millions of Americans owned securities. The merchant class became the middle class, and markets-open to many-became an engine of mobility for more.

From the rubble of the Second World War, the might of American free enterprise-with its industrial base largely intact-rose to meet the severe needs of a ravaged world through manufacturing goods and providing services. Pent-up demand, abundant savings, and expanding opportunity revitalized our securities markets-and, in turn, reinvigorated that invisible hand.

Manufacturing plants that armed the military pivoted to produce a postwar boom-and the American adventurous spirit, not government mandate, spawned innovative automobiles, appliances, and electronics that defined a generation and revolutionized not only industry, but domestic life as well. In time, this revived spirit of enterprise steadily lifted the United States to the seat of dominant global economic leadership.

As the postwar boom matured, the principles by which it was produced came under pressure-until a former governor from California reminded the country what it had forgotten. In the 1980s, President Reagan's bold return to our Founders' limited-government ideals called forth a new morning from economic malaise-proving, again, that first principles work when we have the resolve to rekindle them. But that period, prosperous as it was, amounted not to a capstone of our free market edifice, but to a continuation of its building. In the decades since, our markets have never stopped turning, their depth and dynamism repeatedly outpacing that of the rest of the world.

Of course, we must acknowledge the panics and reckonings woven between the periods of prosperity. Their indelible marks are surely etched into the very streets of this city and the halls of our history. Yet throughout our 250-year story-through boom and recession, war and peace-a pattern emerges with clarity: every crisis threatened to break American capital markets; but none did. On this anniversary, we would do well to ask why.

Each time that our markets bent beneath the weight of adversity, they ultimately endured not because a central planning government scaffolded a recovery, but because the underlying bedrock of free enterprise never shifted. And because, in moments of doubt, Americans returned to first principles rather than abandon them.

The first federal securities law enacted in 1933, for example, was not a rejection of free markets, but an effort meant to preserve them. Its animating premise was simple: markets function best when investors can make autonomous decisions based on honest, material information. True to that notion, Congress did not seek to substitute the judgement of regulators for that of investors. Rather, it sought to restore trust through transparency-strengthening the framework so that risk-taking and capital formation could swiftly recover and safely rise.

Indeed, the history of our markets is not a tale of unbroken ascent. Rather, the long arc bends toward growth-growth that is less a tribute to regulation than to free people investing in free markets, within a government that trusts them to do so.

Even outside observers have arrived at the same conclusion. Peruvian economist Dr. Hernando de Soto studied not what the American system has produced, but what its absence had cost the rest of the world. "Without an integrated formal property system," he concluded, "a modern market economy is inconceivable."[5] In essence, transparency and rule of law support property rights, dependable valuations, and a defense against kleptocratic government. It is such a system-and such a promise-which we are now called to defend.

The American System of Risk and Reward

Behind our market system is not a central planning system but a citizenry-one willing to take risks within the peerless American system that rewards them. Our Founding Fathers took the first and ultimate step: pledging everything against the charge of treason, with no assurance of success and certain execution if they failed. Yet their courage ultimately yielded a constitutional Republic that established the legal framework for all who would follow, enabling generations of Americans to pursue prosperity in their wake.

As the nation's story continued to unfold, and competing ideologies sought to engineer economic strength from the top down, ours was a model that steadily proved its value on the world stage. The many Socialist experiments, built on brute force of totalitarian government and a commitment to central planning, crumbled under a philosophy incapable of channeling the forces of human aspiration. In stark contrast, our system entrusts citizens with freedom, private property rights, and the opportunity to shoulder the burdens and realize the rewards of risk and innovation.

Well, in the decades since-if under different leaders, labels, or "Democratic" descriptors-the same Socialist story has unraveled repeatedly, each time ending in collapse, colossal destructiveness, and poverty, while American markets have stood as a steadfast counterpoint based on individual liberty and rights. As then-SEC Chairman Chris Cox reminded this Club just over 20 years ago, "Our market economy, better than any other system in the world, enables the poor to rise from poverty, and enables the vulnerable and marginalized to be protected. Because after all, wealth must be produced before it can be shared."[6]

So perhaps nowhere is this contrast experienced more palpably than by those beleaguered by such communist and socialist systems-individuals abroad who long for a system that lifts and liberates as America's does, yet who remain captive to the concentrated power above them.

As de Tocqueville observed, Americans are instinctively entrepreneurial and generous. As many of us are witnessing, the World Cup playing out across our country right now offers a striking present-day parallel of his early-1800s observation. Thousands of fans from around the world who travelled to the U.S. expecting only a soccer match or so have encountered something that they did not expect: American life as Americans live it-yet often take for granted. On social media, visitors who rave about air conditioning, and Texas barbeque, and big box stores, and yes, even Ranch dressing. So two centuries on, de Tocqueville's reflections read less like history than like dispatches from this summer.

With each generation, we have not just had an opportunity, but a high calling to remind our fellow citizens of-and live up to-the principles of our free market system. Our way of life is exceptional, not inevitable. And yet the temptation to erode it is never distant-so just step outside, where leaders entrusted to govern this great city that built American commerce are beginning to speak the language of control rather than of freedom-to deliver on campaign promises that would undermine the very foundation that has made this nation great. As President Trump reminded us recently, Communism may seem appealing at first, "but, in the end…great violence proceeds at levels never seen before, and the entity dissolves into poverty, squalor, and crime."[7]

The founding vision of our nation-what our forebears fought for, and what our heroes have died for-was always to serve and safeguard risk-takers, not to second-guess or stifle them; to create the conditions for their flourishing, not to control them.

It is a vision that, as regulators, we must not treat as an historical artifact but must take as an archetype: our rules must be clear enough to guide but restrained enough not to suffocate-preserving the conditions in which the invisible hand can convert the pursuit of personal gain into the promotion of public good. And that is precisely the path that this SEC is charting today.

The SEC Agenda: Returning to First Principles

Too often of late, our regulatory approach has drifted from following the letter of the law predicated on the founding ideals that propelled a young republic to achieve such stunning success. Rules were fashioned to meet social and political goals rather than to preserve First Principles. Enforcement, meanwhile, became a de facto policy instrument. And disclosure obligations, designed to illuminate what is material to investors, were quietly redirected toward what regulators found merely interesting. And with respect to digital assets-the most consequential financial frontier of our time-uncertainty became the policy. Well, innovation did not wait. It simply left our shores. In a world in which telecommunications know no boundaries, Americans found these assets anyway, but without the standards of American laws.

Fortunately, the path forward is illuminated by the light of what we know is true-by the proven approach of the generations of Americans who have gone before us. So, in our nation's 250th year, we at the SEC are doing what our Founders had faith in us to do: clearing and pruning the overgrowth-not to weaken the framework, but to let it bear fruit again. The path to doing so rests on what I am calling the SEC's "ACT strategy," which is comprised of three interlocking aims: to Advance our frameworks into the modern era; to Clarify our jurisdictional lines; and to Transform our rulebook by returning it to first principles. A-C-T.

The first-Advance-begins where the cost of complacency is clearest. Under the previous administration, digital asset innovators operated under regulatory ambiguity-and those who sought regulatory certainty from the SEC often found themselves under investigation instead. The market rendered its verdict, and an entire generation of digital asset innovation developed overseas.

So, over the past year, we have moved purposefully to answer President Trump's call to make America the Crypto Capital of the World. Through what we're calling Project Crypto, we are taking historic steps to modernize our rules and regulations to facilitate markets' moving on-chain. And after years of obscurity, we have delivered long-called-for certainty to digital asset issuers-so that investors and entrepreneurs today can know, before they act, whether a digital asset is considered a security and therefore subject to SEC oversight. To be clear: this is not a favor to industry-it is what markets require to function: clear rules of the road, applied without preference.

But a modernized framework is only as valuable as the clarity with which it is applied. Thus, the 'C' for clarity.

So, after years of fragmented oversight and overlapping authorities, the SEC and CFTC signed an historic Memorandum of Understanding between our two agencies-a framework for aligning key definitions, coordinating oversight, and replacing a regulatory no man's land between the two agencies with new fertile ground for innovation to grow.

The third foundational aim of our strategy-to Transform-in many ways strikes closest to the root of the issue.

Between the 1990s and when I returned to the SEC as Chairman last year, the number of companies listed on the U.S. exchanges had cratered by about 40 percent. Every IPO, I believe, is an invitation for individuals to participate in the prosperity of the next generation of American enterprise. When fewer companies extend that invitation, fewer Americans receive it.

To that end, under my leadership, we are Making IPOs Great Again-most recently by proposing to modify how and when public companies access capital, and what they must disclose when they do. Our recent registered offering reform and filer status reform proposals would, if adopted, broaden the opportunity to capitalize on favorable market conditions and recalibrate disclosure requirements based on a company's size and maturity. In turn, more companies would receive relief from some of the most onerous SEC requirements while retaining those that are essential to informed investment.

Building on this effort, last month we proposed to rescind the prior administration's ill-advised climate disclosure rule-re-tethering our rulebook to the simple principle that the SEC exists to serve all investors, not to advance an agenda of the politicized few or the business models of those who pander to them.

Over the past year-through these steps and others-we have begun clearing the path to going public with materiality as our metric, so that becoming a public company is once again a growing company's goal-not its last resort. Now, I do not pretend to have the panacea to make IPOs great again. The decline did not occur overnight, and it will likewise not be remedied in an instant. Yet, by creating a new environment and shifting the agency's overall posture towards public companies, we are turning the tide: for example, initial submissions for firm-commitment IPOs surged 70 percent from January through early June as compared with the same period back in 2024. And just this month, one company alone raised $85.7 billion[8] -a single offering that eclipsed the total capital raised by the entire U.S. IPO market in each of the years 2024 and 2025.[9]

However, the benefits of revitalizing our capital markets are certainly not reserved for businesses and those who lead them. Another recent transformational market endeavor holds the promise to change the trajectory of every child's life in America. Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump Accounts will launch this week. Beginning on July 4, every U.S. child under 18 is eligible to open a Trump Account: a type of traditional IRA, held in the child's name, with the parent or guardian serving as custodian until the child turns 18. Family, friends, and employers can contribute up to $5,000 per year, per child. And thanks to private philanthropy already flowing into this initiative, millions of low- and middle-income children will start ahead of where they otherwise would have.

In addition, for citizens born between the 1st of January 2025, and December 31, 2028, the federal government will make a one-time, one-thousand-dollar contribution to each child's Trump Account. So the Trump Account initiative is a practical example of applying the lessons of saving and investment of our nation's 250 years to the benefit of the next generation. And looking to the future, with our investor education mandate, the SEC has assisted the Treasury and the rest of the administration in every way that we can to roll out this initiative.

Of course, our return to first principles extends beyond the rules that we excise or implement to how they are enforced. Under this SEC, we have ended the "regulation by enforcement" approach of the past and recentered our enforcement program on the Commission's core mission by prioritizing cases that provide meaningful investor protection and strengthen market integrity. Rather than focusing on the number of enforcement cases and record-setting penalties as opposed to true investor protection, we are redirecting resources toward the types of misconduct that inflict the greatest harm-particularly fraud, market manipulation, and abuses of trust. And, finally, we intend to conduct a broader, thorough review of enforcement processes-something that has only occurred once before in the SEC's history.

Now, as consequential as they are, these reforms are neither comprehensive nor complete. We are forging ahead across every dimension of our mandate to continue modernizing our rulebook; clarifying oversight to unlock innovation; and pruning what is duplicative or frivolous, while preserving what is fit-for-purpose.

Every step toward that end rests on the conviction that has colored this speech from the start: that the SEC's role is not to control our capital markets nor to engineer their outcomes, but to foster the environment in which they can prosper. That was the instinct of the 1933 Securities Act drafters. It was the grand idea of our Founders, who trusted the individual over the institution. And it remains, on this 250th anniversary of the Republic that they built, our surest path forward. Indeed, past Commissions have shown us, with equal clarity, the cost of refusing it.

Conclusion

So, let me close where I began: that is, with the past and with a promise. With memory of our own beginnings, and with the mandate before us.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, our Founding Fathers built the trellis. Less than a hundred years later, de Tocqueville observed its robustness. And by the twentieth century, von Mises asked us to behold the garden of free enterprise that grew along it.

The charge before us today is-unlike what some elected officials in this City insist-not to uproot what our predecessors built. Rather, it is to tend the framework that the Founders designed-one along which prosperity can climb-lest we let the foundation of the trellis, meticulously crafted over the years, be destroyed.

Indeed, to conserve the promise of our unrivaled Republic for the next quarter millennium and beyond, may we together resolve to steward that trellis and safeguard the invisible hand-not only as government regulators, but as builders, as risk-takers, and above all, as Americans.

Thank you very much for your time and attention today. And Larry [Kudlow], I look forward to our conversation ahead.