Human / AI Collaboration — Research Note
Post 3's primary source is the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), "Dangerous Liaisons: Revolving Regulators" (2013, pogo.org) — a report compiling data from 1,949 post-employment disclosure statements filed by 419 unique SEC alumni under 18 U.S.C. § 207 ethics rules, obtained via FOIA, covering 2001–2010. The POGO database's original web interface no longer resolves (404); the 2013 report remains the primary source document. Additional sources: SEC EDGAR and public enforcement records for settlement and waiver documentation; Blackstone Group SEC filings and press releases for asset acquisition history; UBS AG annual reports and DOJ/SEC enforcement records; Investment Company Institute public filings; deHaan, Kedia, Koh, and Rajgopal (2015), "The Revolving Door and the SEC's Enforcement Outcomes," Journal of Accounting and Economics — academic peer-reviewed study confirming revolving door alumni achieved measurably better enforcement outcomes for clients. FSA methodology: Randy Gipe. Research compilation and synthesis: Randy Gipe & Claude (Anthropic).
I. The POGO Database: What the Record Shows
The Project on Government Oversight's 2013 "Dangerous Liaisons" report is the most comprehensive public documentation of the SEC revolving door in the post-crisis period. It is not an advocacy document in the sense of making claims beyond what its source material supports. It is a compiled public record — disclosure statements that former SEC employees were legally required to file, obtained through FOIA, organized into a searchable database. FSA's standard is the same standard POGO applied: the record says what the record says.
419
Unique former SEC employees who filed post-employment disclosure statements, 2001–2010
Source: POGO "Dangerous Liaisons" (2013)
1,949
Total disclosure statements filed — an average of nearly five per alumnus, in some cases many more
Source: POGO "Dangerous Liaisons" (2013)
>20
Alumni who filed their first disclosure within one week of leaving the SEC — before starting new employment
Source: POGO "Dangerous Liaisons" (2013)
68
Disclosure filings involving WilmerHale — the single law firm most represented in the database, handling crisis-era bank settlements
Source: POGO "Dangerous Liaisons" (2013)
Source Context — What the Disclosure Statements Record and Don't Record
Post-employment disclosure statements under 18 U.S.C. § 207 are required when a former federal employee intends to represent a client or new employer before their former agency within two years of leaving government service. The statements record: the alumnus's name, their former SEC position and division, the date they left the agency, their new employer or client, the date of the planned representation, and the matter they plan to address — whether an enforcement investigation, rulemaking proceeding, no-action request, or waiver application.
What the statements do not record: representations made more than two years after leaving, work that doesn't involve direct contact with the former agency, advice given to clients about how to navigate SEC rules without formal agency appearances, or the full scope of an alumnus's post-government career. The database is a floor, not a ceiling. It captures the first two years and the formal appearances. It does not capture the full influence architecture.
The deHaan et al. (2015) peer-reviewed study — published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics — analyzed the POGO data alongside SEC enforcement outcomes and found that revolving door lawyers achieved statistically measurably better outcomes for their clients: lower penalties, higher rates of dropped charges, more favorable settlement terms. This is not a claim the POGO report makes. It is the academic finding that the POGO data, combined with enforcement outcome data, produces.
FSA methodological note: Every chain below is built from the POGO disclosure record, SEC enforcement documents, and public corporate filings. The chains document what the public record documents — personnel transitions, regulatory actions, and capital outcomes that are temporally and institutionally connected. FSA does not assert legal liability, corrupt intent, or quid pro quo arrangements. FSA maps documented sequences and names the architectural function those sequences served. The reader evaluates the significance.
II. The Personnel Chains — Built From Public Record
Six chains. Each begins with a named individual at the SEC. Each proceeds through a documented regulatory action — a settlement, a waiver, a lobbying appearance, a no-action letter. Each ends at a documented capital outcome — a firm recapitalized, an instrument preserved, a regulatory gap widened. Every link in every chain is sourced to public record.
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PERSON
Kenneth J. Berman — former Associate Director of the SEC's Division of Investment Management. One of the senior officials within the division responsible for regulating investment companies and investment advisers — the regulatory universe that includes BDCs, money market funds, and the asset management entities at the center of the shadow banking reconstitution.
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TRANSITION
Berman joins
Dechert LLP — one of the top destinations in the POGO database with multiple alumni filings. Dechert specializes in financial services regulatory work, investment fund formation, and enforcement defense. Among Dechert's major clients: UBS AG, the Swiss global banking and financial services firm that had been a central participant in the crisis-era instruments that triggered 2008 — including auction-rate securities and subprime CDO structuring.
Source: POGO "Dangerous Liaisons" (2013); Dechert LLP client history, public enforcement records
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REGULATORY ACTION 1
Berman at Dechert obtains a
Well-Known Seasoned Issuer (WKSI) waiver for UBS AG following UBS's $19.4 billion auction-rate securities settlement. The settlement resolved allegations that UBS had misrepresented the liquidity and risk of auction-rate securities to clients — instruments that froze in February 2008, locking $330 billion in what had been marketed as cash-equivalent holdings. Under SEC rules, a firm found to have committed securities fraud is disqualified from WKSI status — the streamlined securities issuance authority that large firms rely on for capital market access. Berman argues UBS's compliance record justifies a waiver restoring that status. The SEC grants it.
Source: SEC waiver records; UBS $19.4B settlement documentation; POGO report
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REGULATORY ACTION 2
Berman at Dechert obtains a second WKSI waiver for UBS following a 2011
municipal bond rigging settlement ($160 million), in which UBS admitted to participating in a bid-rigging scheme that defrauded municipal issuers — state and local governments — over multiple years. Same argument: UBS's compliance program warrants continued securities issuance authority despite the admitted misconduct.
Source: DOJ/SEC municipal bond rigging settlement records; POGO report
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CAPITAL OUTCOME
UBS, having paid settlements totaling over
$35 billion across its crisis-era fraud exposures while retaining securities issuance authority through the waiver process, recapitalizes its U.S. asset management operations and expands into private credit fund management and structured credit vehicles. UBS's wealth management division becomes one of the largest allocators to private credit funds in the post-Dodd-Frank period — channeling client assets into the reconstituted shadow banking system outside the regulatory perimeter its own banking operations now face.
Source: UBS AG Annual Reports 2012–2020; SEC investment adviser filings
FSA Conduit Finding: The WKSI waiver is the chain's architectural hinge. Without the waiver, UBS cannot access U.S. capital markets on a streamlined basis following fraud admissions. With the waiver — obtained by a former senior official from the division that regulates investment companies — UBS retains the capital market access that funds its reconstitution into the private credit ecosystem. The waiver does not cause the reconstitution. It removes the legal obstacle that would otherwise have interrupted it.
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PERSON
Colleen P. Mahoney — former Deputy Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. The Enforcement Division is the SEC's prosecutorial arm — the division responsible for investigating securities fraud, recommending charges, and negotiating settlements. A Deputy Director sits at the senior level of that division's decision-making structure, overseeing the investigations and enforcement actions that shape the agency's entire post-crisis accountability record.
Source: POGO "Dangerous Liaisons" (2013); SEC organizational records
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TRANSITION
Mahoney joins
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP — one of the largest and most prominent law firms in financial services regulatory defense. Skadden represented major financial institutions in post-crisis enforcement actions. Among its clients in the post-crisis period: UBS AG, appearing again as the recipient of the chain's key regulatory outcome.
Source: POGO report; Skadden LLP public filings
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REGULATORY ACTION
Mahoney at Skadden obtains a WKSI waiver for UBS following a 2012
Puerto Rico closed-end bond fund settlement, in which UBS was found to have misled clients about the liquidity of Puerto Rico municipal bond funds — funds it had marketed aggressively to retail investors, particularly in Puerto Rico itself, where the concentrated losses contributed to the territory's subsequent debt crisis. Same pattern: fraud admission, waiver application, continued securities issuance authority granted.
Source: SEC enforcement action UBS Puerto Rico funds; POGO report
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CAPITAL OUTCOME
UBS retains WKSI status across multiple fraud settlements through the waiver process — settlements involving auction-rate securities, municipal bond rigging, and Puerto Rico fund misrepresentation. Each waiver restores or maintains the capital market access that funds the bank's continued operations and its expansion into the asset management and private credit ecosystem. A former Deputy Enforcement Director at the SEC — the official responsible for enforcing the rules that WKSI disqualification is designed to apply — appears twice in UBS's waiver documentation after crossing the revolving door.
Source: SEC EDGAR waiver records; POGO report; UBS settlement documentation
FSA Conduit Finding: Chains 1 and 2 both terminate at UBS — the same institution, the same WKSI waiver mechanism, executed by alumni from different SEC divisions (Investment Management and Enforcement) who crossed the revolving door to different firms (Dechert and Skadden) and arrived at the same regulatory outcome. This is not coincidence. It is the architecture of institutional knowledge: the value of a former senior SEC official in a private law firm is precisely their understanding of how the agency they left makes decisions — and their ability to present arguments in the language and framework that agency finds persuasive.
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PERSON
Justin Daly — former counsel to an SEC Commissioner. Commissioner's counsel positions sit at the intersection of policy, rulemaking, and enforcement — the officials who help shape the Commissioner's positions on the rules and proceedings that come before the full Commission for a vote. Departed the SEC February 2010 — the same year Dodd-Frank was signed.
Source: POGO "Dangerous Liaisons" (2013)
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TRANSITION
Daly joins
Ogilvy Government Relations as a lobbyist, subsequently founding Daly Consulting Group. He files post-employment disclosure statements to represent clients before the SEC — including the
Investment Company Institute (ICI), the primary trade association for mutual funds and asset managers, and
The Blackstone Group, the world's largest alternative asset manager and one of the primary architects of the post-Dodd-Frank private credit expansion.
Source: POGO report; lobbying disclosure records
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REGULATORY ACTION
Daly lobbies the SEC on
Dodd-Frank implementing regulations affecting derivatives and investment company rules — the specific regulatory provisions that determine how private credit funds, BDCs, and alternative asset managers are treated under the new framework. He also lobbies on
money market fund regulations in July 2012, at the precise moment when the SEC was considering whether to require floating NAVs and impose other reforms that would have constrained the money market sector's function as the shadow banking system's primary short-term funding conduit.
Source: POGO report; lobbying disclosure records; SEC rulemaking dockets 2010–2012
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FIRM TRAJECTORY
The Blackstone Group's private credit expansion in the post-Dodd-Frank period is one of the most precisely documented reconstitution sequences in the series. In 2023, Blackstone acquired
Credit Suisse's securitized products group — the division that managed Credit Suisse's structured credit, ABS, and CLO operations, which Credit Suisse was forced to divest following its own collapse. Blackstone absorbed a major institutional infrastructure of the same securitized credit architecture that had been at the center of 2008.
Source: Blackstone Group SEC filings; WSJ/FT reporting on Credit Suisse SPG acquisition, 2023
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CAPITAL OUTCOME
Blackstone's private credit and credit insurance platform grows to approximately
$300+ billion in credit assets under management by 2024, within a total AUM of over $1 trillion. The firm's credit operations include direct lending, CLO management, structured credit, and insurance-linked credit vehicles — the full spectrum of post-Dodd-Frank private credit instruments operating outside the bank regulatory perimeter. A former SEC Commissioner's counsel lobbied for Blackstone on the specific regulations governing these instruments' formation and operation during the window when those regulations were being written.
Source: Blackstone Group Q4 2024 earnings; SEC filings
FSA Conduit Finding: The Daly chain operates at the rulemaking level rather than the enforcement level. Where Chains 1 and 2 secured post-settlement waivers — removing obstacles after the fact — Chain 3 shaped the regulatory framework during formation. A former Commissioner's counsel lobbying on the specific Dodd-Frank implementing rules that govern private credit fund formation and money market fund structure, on behalf of the firm that became one of the largest operators inside those rules, is the conduit layer's most upstream architectural connection.
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THREE PERSONS — ONE COORDINATED OUTCOME
Post 3's most architecturally precise chain involves not a single individual but three former senior SEC Investment Management officials who coordinated — on the public record, in documented submissions — to oppose the same regulatory reform at the same time, on behalf of the same industry interest: the preservation of money market funds as short-term credit conduits without floating NAV requirements that would have made their systemic fragility visible to investors.
Karrie McMillan: former senior official in SEC's Division of Investment Management → joined the Investment Company Institute as General Counsel. Filed formal comment letters opposing floating NAV requirements for money market funds in February and April 2012.
Susan Ferris Wyderko: former Acting Director of SEC's Division of Investment Management → President/CEO of the Mutual Fund Directors Forum. Co-signed with McMillan on advocacy against money market reforms. Met SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar in March 2012 to argue against floating NAV requirements, warning that reform would drive assets to less-regulated alternatives.
Laura Unger: former SEC Commissioner and Acting Chairman → joined Promontory Financial Group as special adviser. Accompanied a Fidelity Investments delegation to SEC meetings in February 2012 opposing money market fund regulations.
Source: POGO "Dangerous Liaisons" (2013); SEC comment letter records 2012; SEC meeting logs
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COORDINATED REGULATORY ACTION
The three former Investment Management officials — representing the ICI, the Mutual Fund Directors Forum, and Promontory/Fidelity — participated in the same 2012 SEC rulemaking process on money market fund reform, making substantially the same argument: that requiring floating NAVs would drive institutional investors out of money market funds into less-regulated alternatives, harming markets rather than improving stability. This argument was effective. The SEC's 2014 final rule applied floating NAV requirements only to institutional prime money market funds, not to retail funds or government funds, and phased implementation to October 2016 — four years after the lobbying campaign. The $2.7 trillion money market sector's function as the shadow banking system's primary short-term funding conduit was preserved largely intact through the critical 2010–2016 reconstitution window.
Source: SEC Release No. IC-31166, July 23, 2014; POGO report; SEC meeting logs 2012
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CAPITAL OUTCOME
Money market funds — whose "breaking the buck" in September 2008 had been the crisis's most acute systemic event — continued operating as the shadow banking system's primary short-term funding conduit through the entire period during which the private credit market grew from $310 billion to over $1 trillion. The floating NAV requirement, which would have made the funds' systemic fragility transparent to investors and constrained their use as risk-free substitutes for bank deposits, was delayed until 2016. Three former senior officials from the SEC division that regulates investment companies argued for that delay, on the record, in formal proceedings, on behalf of the industry they had formerly regulated.
Source: SEC rulemaking record; Federal Reserve shadow banking data; POGO report
FSA Conduit Finding: The money market preservation chain is the conduit layer's most structurally complete example because it shows the revolving door operating at scale — not one official, one firm, one waiver, but three former officials from the same division, now at three different industry organizations, coordinating a shared regulatory outcome that preserved the shadow banking system's primary funding mechanism for six years after the crisis that mechanism had amplified. The outcome they produced was not a corrupt one by any legal standard. It was a rational one, by FSA Axiom III — former officials who understood the regulatory process arguing, skillfully and effectively, for the outcome that benefited the industry they now served.
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PERSON
Kathleen Casey — SEC Commissioner from 2006 to 2011. A full Commissioner sits at the top of the SEC's governance structure — one of five officials who vote on all major enforcement actions, rulemaking, and institutional decisions. Casey's tenure spanned the financial crisis and the Dodd-Frank drafting period — she was an active Commissioner during the precise window when the agency's post-crisis regulatory architecture was being determined.
Source: SEC Commissioner bios; POGO report
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TRANSITION
In September 2012 — fourteen months after leaving the Commission — Casey becomes
Chairman of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), the global trade association representing hedge funds, private credit funds, and alternative asset managers. AIMA's membership includes the largest hedge funds and private credit operators in the world — the precise class of institutions whose growth in the post-Dodd-Frank period constitutes the shadow banking reconstitution this series documents.
Source: POGO report; AIMA press release, September 2012
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STRUCTURAL FUNCTION
As AIMA Chairman, Casey leads the organization's engagement with global financial regulators — including the SEC — on the rules governing hedge fund registration, reporting, leverage, and investor protection that were being implemented under Dodd-Frank's Title IV (Dodd-Frank's Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act). These rules determine how much visibility regulators have into the alternative investment sector's leverage, risk concentration, and systemic interconnections. A former SEC Commissioner leading the industry association that argues against those disclosure requirements in regulatory proceedings is the conduit layer's governance-level manifestation.
Source: AIMA regulatory submissions 2012–2015; Dodd-Frank Title IV implementation dockets
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CAPITAL OUTCOME
The hedge fund and alternative investment sector — the broader category that includes private credit funds, direct lenders, and CLO managers — operates in 2025 with registration and reporting requirements that provide regulators with substantially less systemic risk visibility than the bank regulatory framework provides for comparable credit exposures. The Form PF reporting that Dodd-Frank required for private fund advisers has been repeatedly criticized by the Financial Stability Board and the IMF as providing insufficient data for systemic risk assessment. A former SEC Commissioner represented the industry that benefits from that opacity during the window when the reporting rules were being designed.
Source: FSB and IMF assessments of private credit reporting gaps, 2023–2024; AIMA submissions to SEC on Form PF
FSA Conduit Finding: Chain 5 operates at the highest institutional level in the database — a full Commissioner, not a staff official, moving to chair the primary global trade association for the industry whose regulation she had just overseen. The significance is not one specific regulatory action but the accumulated institutional knowledge and credibility a former Commissioner brings to industry advocacy: knowing how the Commission deliberates, what arguments it finds persuasive, and which officials to approach on which issues. That knowledge does not expire in two years. The disclosure requirement does.
III. The Conduit Layer's Defining Property
FSA Structural Finding — The Revolving Door as Reconstitution Mechanism
The five chains documented above are not corruption. No law was broken in any of them that the public record documents. Post-employment disclosure requirements existed precisely to create transparency about these transitions — and the POGO database is built from those disclosures, which means the system recorded what it was designed to record. The chains are legal, documented, and — by FSA Axiom III — rational. Former officials with deep regulatory expertise, moving to firms that need that expertise, exercising that expertise on behalf of those firms in regulatory proceedings, producing outcomes that benefit those firms. Every step is rational within the system.
What FSA adds to the POGO record is the capital sequence: the chains do not terminate at the regulatory action. They continue to the capital outcome. Berman secures UBS's WKSI waiver → UBS retains capital market access → UBS expands into private credit. Daly lobbies for Blackstone on Dodd-Frank investment company rules → those rules are shaped with private credit funds' operational requirements accommodated → Blackstone grows to $300+ billion in credit assets. McMillan, Wyderko, and Unger preserve money market funds as the shadow banking system's short-term funding conduit → the $310 billion private credit market of 2010 reaches $3 trillion by 2025 with money market funding intact throughout.
The revolving door's function in the reconstitution is not that it produced any single outcome that would not otherwise have occurred. Its function is that it made the aggregate of those outcomes — waiver by waiver, rulemaking by rulemaking, lobbying appearance by lobbying appearance — more likely, more consistent, and more durable than they would have been without it. The conduit layer did not build the reconstitution. It smoothed every surface the reconstitution had to pass through.
Post 4 maps the conversion layer: how the crisis-era settlement payments — the fines that were supposed to hold the banks accountable — were structured in ways that freed bank balance sheets to sell exactly the credit assets that private credit funds then absorbed. The accountability architecture and the reconstitution architecture ran in parallel, through the same years, using the same asset base. The conduit layer connected them.
"The revolving door between the SEC and private sector firms creates the risk that former SEC employees use their agency contacts and knowledge to benefit their new clients in ways that undermine the public interest."
— Project on Government Oversight
"Dangerous Liaisons: Revolving Regulators," 2013
Source Notes
[1] POGO database and report: Project on Government Oversight, "Dangerous Liaisons: Revolving Regulators" (2013, pogo.org). Primary data source for all personnel transition information in this post. 1,949 disclosure statements, 419 alumni, 2001–2010. Original web database no longer resolves (404 as of 2026); the published report and its appendices are the primary accessible source. All named individuals and their transitions, former positions, new employers, and disclosed representations are sourced from this report.
[2] deHaan et al. (2015): Ed deHaan, Simi Kedia, Kevin Koh, and Shivaram Rajgopal, "The Revolving Door and the SEC's Enforcement Outcomes," Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2015. Peer-reviewed academic study finding that revolving door lawyers achieved measurably better enforcement outcomes for clients — lower penalties, higher rates of dropped charges — than non-revolving-door lawyers. Available at ssrn.com.
[3] UBS settlements: (a) Auction-rate securities: $19.4 billion settlement 2008–2009; (b) Municipal bond rigging: $160 million settlement, 2011 (DOJ/SEC joint action); (c) Puerto Rico closed-end funds: SEC enforcement action, 2012. All settlements publicly documented in SEC and DOJ press releases. WKSI waivers: SEC no-action/waiver records, available via SEC EDGAR.
[4] Blackstone Credit Suisse SPG acquisition: Blackstone Group 8-K and press release, 2023. Blackstone's total AUM and credit platform size: Blackstone Q4 2024 earnings release and investor presentation.
[5] Money market fund reform timeline: SEC Release No. IC-31166, "Money Market Fund Reform; Amendments to Form PF" (July 23, 2014) — the final rule that phased in floating NAV requirements for institutional prime funds only, effective October 2016. Comment letters from ICI (McMillan) and MFDF (Wyderko): publicly available in SEC comment file for proposed rule IC-29497 (2012). Fidelity/Unger meeting: POGO report citing SEC meeting logs, February 2012.
[6] Kathleen Casey/AIMA: AIMA press release announcing Casey as Chairman, September 2012. AIMA regulatory submissions on Dodd-Frank Title IV (Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act): available at AIMA.org regulatory archive. Form PF criticisms by FSB and IMF: FSB "Vulnerabilities in the Nonbank Financial Intermediation Sector" (December 2023); IMF Global Financial Stability Report (April 2024), Chapter 2.
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