In 2015, Peirce was chosen during the Obama administration to fill a Republican seat at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee attempted to block her nomination because she declined to fully commit to requiring corporations to publicly disclose political donations. Peirce was eventually approved by the Senate Banking Committee, but the full Senate never voted on her nomination.[10]
On July 18, 2017, the White House announced that President Donald Trump would nominate Peirce as a Commissioner of the SEC for the remainder of a five-year term expiring on June 5, 2020.[11] She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 21, 2017, and sworn in on January 11, 2018. on August 6, 2020, the Senate confirmed Peirce by voice vote for another five-year term expiring on June 5, 2025,[12] and was sworn in on August 17, 2020.[13]
Views
Peirce regularly contributed through books, articles, comments and statements to the debate about banking regulation. She has been critical of the regulatory expansion enacted in response to the 2008 financial crisis.[14][15] In her 2012 book Dodd-Frank, What It Does and Why It's Flawed, she argues for economic freedom and against the idea that markets could be improved through regulatory ‘micromanagement’.[16] She stated that the more important regulation becomes, the less are banks oriented towards their actual duty, which is to service customers with financial opportunities.[17] In 2016, a book she co-edited entitled Reframing Financial Regulation: Enhancing Stability and Protecting Consumers was published by the Mercatus Center.[18]
Peirce had opinion editorials published in The New York Times in 2012[19] and in 2013,[20] wherein she said it would be more sensible to let the market pare the big banks down to size rather than nationalizing them. Peirce has also authored articles in American Banker, The Hill and FinRegRag. In January 2017, she spoke at the American Economic Association in Chicago, where she discussed reforms of the role of financial regulators[21] a topic she had previously raised in a video by the Mercatus Center in 2015.[22]
In 2018, Peirce argued that lawyers who work for large corporations practice a form of public interest law. She also suggested that her own work at the SEC "indirectly" qualified as public interest law.[23]
On May 25, 2022, Peirce stated that the United States had "dropped the regulatory ball" with respect to cryptocurrency regulation.[24]
In June 2022, Peirce argued in her capacity as a Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that "it is time for the Commission to stop denying categorically spot crypto exchange-traded products."
