Is Sarbanes-Oxley Outdated?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Economy, HistoryBoth Oxley and Sarbanes, the politicians who wrote the legislation, say yes.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 and is filed under Economy, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:58 am
It was never *in-date*. It is a prime example of very poor legislation passed in the heat of the moment with untold economic consequences.
There is misconcepiton that Enron Execs and Arthur Anderson lied about the Enron books. They did not. All the cagey transactions were right there in the 10-K and 10-Q statements to SEC. It was this public disclosure that ultimately broke the story when smart people started looking at the numbers that actually precipitated the collapse of the company. The problem was not with “disclosure.”
The real problem with Enron was with: 1) mark-to-market accounting for commodity futures which allowed them to claim unrealized gains and 2) sham executive partnerships that assumed the companies debts, but which were reassumed by the company.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Dead on Dos. And I think that case needs to made again.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:50 am
DP, Your absolutely right, I’d only add that the SEC’s failure to bring charges against the full Board of Dircetors of Enron is BS. The entire board approved the actions of Lay, Skilling, Fastow, etc. and failed in their duties to the shareholders. They were guilty under existing laws and should have been prosecuted.