Pushing For A Repeal Of Sarbanes-Oxley

from the about-frickin-time dept

It's been over six years since we began banging the drum around here to get Congress to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, the law that was hastily written post-Enron to try to prevent such collapses again, but instead simply added a huge compliance tax, without doing much of anything to actually prevent corporate fraud. Corporate fraud is still rampant, and the law did absolutely nothing to prevent the financial collapse we see ourselves in today. There were, instead, massive unintended consequences, leading companies to go public elsewhere, go private or avoid the public markets altogether. The lack of IPOs, especially in the tech space over the past few years, even as the economy was looking strong, is incredibly telling.

So, it's good to see a renewed effort to get Congress to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, which simply created a massive tax in terms of compliance, with awful unintended (though, totally predictable) consequences -- all while doing almost nothing to cut down on actual fraud.

I am a strong believer in the idea that fraud should be punished heavily -- but Sarbanes-Oxley didn't do that. It just moved the loopholes and punished the honest companies by dumping a huge compliance tax on them. It's been bad for the economy, bad for startups and bad for innovation, and it's time to go.

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