Sarbanes-Oxley Act

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This article's wording may not conform to a neutral point of view. Currently there may not be a dispute, but it may need discussion on the talk page.

For background, see Wikipedia:Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act might provide an opportunity for Libertarians to demonstrate how government intervention can lead to a cure that's at least as bad as the disease. In broad terms here is EqualOpportunityCynic's understanding of the chronology:

• A bunch of corporations did some undeniably naughty (and illegal) things: Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, ...
• Congress decided -- arguably correctly -- that lack of checks on corporate misdoings were partially to blame
• Congress came up with a scheme to ensure that no CEO or other offical, ever, can claim to not know some detail of the business.

Unfortunately this scheme also involved so many reams of excess documentation that a cottage industry sprang up of compliance consultants.

[edit] descent into ranting

Now, I'm not really crazy about corporate dishonesty, and I do think that one of the legitimate roles of goverment is to referee the free market -- i.e. make sure the actors are all telling the truth. But surely S-O is an example of how not to react to a serious social problem, at least from what I've seen.

OK, that's my rant for the day. I don't know enough details to really give better-informed opinion. Feel free to edit this and make it factual and NPOV. - EqualOpportunityCynic 14:13, 2 Jun 2005 (PDT)