Most debates over financial regulation are, in an obvious first-order sense, about whether regulation should favor one group of rich powerful financial professionals, or another group.
[...]
In fact the CEOs and the hedge fund managers are just representatives of broader groups and more important principles. The hedge fund managers will tell you that they invest the pension money of ordinary people, and that anyway they are advocating for more power for ordinary investors. The CEOs will tell you that they just want to be able to make long-term decisions for the good of their companies in a way that will preserve ordinary people’s jobs and savings.
[...]
The SEC isn’t changing the rules because it believes that that’s what Main Street investors want; it’s changing the rules because it believes that that’s what Main Street investors would want, if they paid attention to any of this. The SEC, and the people actually writing the [fake] letters, agree that this change is in the interests of ordinary investors and is the sort of thing that ordinary investors would want. It just feels more concrete if they can point to a ordinary investor who does want it.
From Matt Levine's column: