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Occupy the SEC

Occupy the SEC
Part of the "Occupy" protests
Occupy the SEC logo.png
Date October 2011 – ongoing
Location New York City, New York, United States
Caused by Financial regulatory activity, corporate influence over government, economic inequality, inter alia.
Methods Demonstration, activism, correspondence
Status Ongoing
www.occupythesec.org

Occupy the SEC (OSEC) is an activist group which aims to influence financial regulators to work for the public interest. The "SEC" in its name refers to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, but OSEC's scope covers all financial regulatory activity. OSEC was formed and developed as an outgrowth and working group of Occupy Wall Street.

Among its members are employees or former employees of some of the largest financial firms. They have been described as "a counterweight to the deep-pocket lobbying push" by financial firms against reform.

OSEC was founded in October 2011 as a working group of Occupy Wall Street, the protest movement which started in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan on September 17, 2011. After initially meeting on a bench in Zuccotti Park, late October 2011, the group evolved into a bi-weekly "book club" at a diner near the park, and then met weekly in the atrium of 60 Wall Street. The group first gained attention after tackling a response to the proposed Volcker Rule, part of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, that would severely limit proprietary trading at commercial banks, similar to the Glass Steagall Act of 1933. OSEC drafted answers to questions regarding the proposed rule, which were included in a 325-page comment letter submitted to the SEC on February 13, 2012.

Submitted by OSEC to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 13, 2012, the 325-page comment letter was hailed as "amazing", describing how the authors went through the rule "line by line, explaining where it’s useless and where it can and should be improved." Others suggested OSEC was doing "the day-in, day-out grind of policymaking—calling legislators, responding to regulatory agencies, learning the issues..." OSEC's comment letter was close to the lengthiest and most detailed of the 16,000 letters sent to the SEC, with the vast majority coming from industry insiders. This letter was cited 284 times by the Federal Reserve Board when the regulations were ultimately put into effect in 2013.


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