Mary Schapiro on Her Tenure as SEC Chairman

When I was asked to take this role, people were talking about abolishing the SEC. That was unthinkable to me, and it made the job more compelling. The SEC had fallen behind in areas like technology and staffing, and the world had changed around us. I took the handcuffs off the staff to be more aggressive and brought in experts so we could do the toughest cases. I made it clear that we had to be focused on investors.

I hadn’t anticipated all the hurdles to moving quickly, like not being able to open an investigation without having to get five commissioners to vote on it. We got a lot done in Dodd-Frank, but many of the time frames that were built into the law were unrealistic. The budget was a consistent frustration. We have to go to Congress every year, and it’s an uncertain process at best. It didn’t allow us to get everything we needed to ramp up the technology quickly or to deal with a midyear crisis.