Tag: Securities Act of 1933

Delaware, Power At Play

Taking the Wolves’ Side

daelnorwood

Or, The Road to Hell is Paved With Private Offerings

Two wolves, one biting the other's snout; blue shadows, yellow highlights, duotone. "Wolves (Canis lupus lupus) at Polar Zoo in municipality of Bardu, Troms County, Norway." From Wikimedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wolves_in_Norway.jpg
Bipartisan Comity

I have a brief opinion piece in the Bay to Bay News today, that puts a new, bad bill in historical context – and explains why I think it will harm a lot of people.

Here’s a teaser:

It’s 2025: Do you feel like you aren’t getting scammed enough? Are you tired of not being cheated, ripped off and defrauded? Probably not. We’re drowning in spam calls, phishing emails and junk mail, all pitching shady deals. It seems like we’re under constant siege by an army of con artists — and they’re winning.

Most people would prefer that government stop these financial predators — not lead more wolves to the door.

Unfortunately, Congress has taken the side of the wolves. Led by Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., the House of Representatives just unanimously passed the Equal Opportunity for All Investors Act of 2025. The bill smashes down guardrails that, for almost a century, kept Wall Street sharpers from picking the pockets of regular people. Together with the Trump administration’s rush to eradicate limits on private equity’s access to your retirement savings, this legislation sets the stage for a new financial crisis.

~ Dael Norwood, “Norwood: McBride’s New Bill Threatens with Old Scams,” Bay to Bay News (Dover, DE), August 8, 2025, https://baytobaynews.com/stories/norwood-mcbrides-new-bill-threatens-with-old-scams,244521.

I also did a thread on Bluesky linking out to the sources I consulted while writing.

Archival Follies, Delaware

In Close Touch, But Not Commanded

daelnorwood

Or, a New Deal Democrat describes a Delaware Senator as … unbought?

A portrait of a pale, elderly white man wearing a suit and glasses, with white hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. TOWNSEND, JOHN G. SENATOR Abstract/medium: 1 negative : glass ; 8 x 10 in. or smaller. Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress. between 1905 and 1945, possibly circa 1930. Avail via Wikipedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TOWNSEND,_JOHN_G._SENATOR_LCCN2016860876_(Cropped).jpg
Sen. John G. Townsend, Jr., of Delaware. Apparently not fully owned by corporate interests!

In the course of researching the political history of the Securities Act of 1933, I encountered a rather surprising description of a Delaware politician. In 1959, “Dean” James M. Landis, one of the aides primarily responsible for drafting the bill and shepherding it through Congress, published a close account of his experience getting this critical New Deal legislation off the drawing board and into the law books.

His article is a brief but quite detailed play-by-play of the political process – an Aaron Sorkin narrative, but with substance – and includes a number of deft character sketches of the various politicos and operators he dealt with as he hustled the most important federal financial regulation ever written over the finish line.

At the moment of high drama of his narrative (the House-Senate bill reconciliation conference meetings) he characterizes Senator John G. Townsend, Jr. (R-DE) this way:

“The tenseness of the first day’s session became relieved as [Rep. Sam] Rayburn made it plain that any suggestion of any Senator would receive the most careful consideration. A goodly number of suggestions came from Senator Townsend of Delaware, a Republican, who was in close touch with the financial world but who under no circumstances would take their suggestions as commands or as ideas to hold on to in the face of a compelling argument to the contrary.” [emphasis mine]

~James M. Landis, “Legislative History of the Securities Act of 1933,” George Washington Law Review 28, no. 1 (1959): 45-46

FDR’s man on the ground, a Felix Frankfurter student and Louis Brandeis protégé, a future chair of the SEC, Landis was impressed with how uncorrupted a Delaware Senator was by corporate financiers. As far as I know, that makes Townsend the first – and perhaps only – senator thusly described (certainly that differentiates him from other Delaware (state) senators who share his name…)

In short: history is full of surprises!

And ironies, too: the latest neoliberal salvo aimed at fatally wounding the New Deal regulatory state – and specifically, to gut the Securities Act of 1933 that Townsend helped design – was co-sponsored by none other than Delaware’s own Rep. Sarah McBride. As Rep. McBride’s personal PR page notes, this attack on financial transparency and good government is “Her First Bill in Congress.”