This video can be viewed at the below link.[1]

This year marks an important 90th birthday.

Not just for Carol Burnett.

Not just for Willie Nelson.

But today marks 90 years since May 27th, 1933, when President Franklin Roosevelt—working alongside then-committee chair Sam Rayburn and the United States Congress—signed the first of the federal securities laws: the Securities Act of 1933.

Roosevelt saw the issue so clearly. Across this great country, before the law was passed, Americans were using their hard-earned money to purchase securities. But they weren’t often getting the right information. They were getting flimflammed, purchasing securities from hucksters and con-artists.

As Roosevelt and Rayburn understood, our capital markets work if investors get to decide which risks to take so long as the companies raising money from them make what Roosevelt called “complete and truthful disclosures.”

You see, FDR called this law the “Truth in Securities” Act.

He said on that May 27, 90 years ago: “those who seek to draw upon other people’s money must be wholly candid regarding the facts on which the investor’s judgment is asked.” The ’33 Act helped restore trust in our capital markets.

When the SEC was set up just a year later, a key adviser to Roosevelt, Felix Frankfurter, recommended he staff the agency with people “who have stamina and do not weary of the fight, who are moved neither by blandishments nor fears, who in a word, unite public zeal with unusual capacity.”

On this May 27, 90 years later, I am so proud that our staff represents the best of what Frankfurter had in mind.

We at the SEC are committed to our mission on behalf of investors and issuers alike, and ensuring that the markets that connect them works for them.

So, happy birthday to the ’33 Act. Here’s to 90 more years.