Can you give some examples of when the SEC has abused its power?
Afaik, the general consensus is that the SEC has historically been way too toothless in its power to fight corruption in the markets. For example, in taking on the big hedge-funds+banks etc, the picture I've generally read is that it's been pitting rather average-IQ government wage employees against far smarter + higher-paid evil geniuses (if you're high IQ in the finance/legal world - where do you choose to work - for SEC or for private sector with 10x+ wages), and generally only ever succeeding in obtaining token wrist-slaps, penalizing the companies for a fraction of their corrupt gains and almost never succeeding in any jail time for the people at fault.