The Worst Ideas of the Decade - Sarbanes-Oxley

Re:The Worst Ideas of the Decade - Sarbanes-Oxley by lkrubner on Monday December 21, 2009 @09:17PM (#1009225)

dhimes, fraud has been illegal for centuries. Sarbanes-Oxley did not outlaw fraud. You are confusing issues of corporate governance with issues of fraud. There are some important issues that the law should address about how much power shareholders should have over their officers, and how much information the officers should be compelled to share. I can think of a 100 reforms I'd like to see that would give more power to shareholders. A CEO is a hired hand, just like a janitor or an electrician, but CEOs have vastly more power to do harm to shareholders interest than any janitor or electrician. Enron is an outstanding example of this. But of the 100 reforms I'd like to see, none of them look anything like Sarbanes-Oxley.

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Re:The Worst Ideas of the Decade - Sarbanes-Oxley by dhimes on Monday December 21, 2009 @09:33PM (#1009254)

fraud has been illegal for centuries. Sarbanes-Oxley did not outlaw fraud.

yeah, no shit. We're saying the same thing. Sheesh.

But of the 100 reforms I'd like to see, none of them look anything like Sarbanes-Oxley.

Agreed again. So what is your point? Did you even read what I've been writing here?

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Re:The Worst Ideas of the Decade - Sarbanes-Oxley by mnemonicsloth on Monday December 21, 2009 @11:52PM (#1009449)

The two of you agree on everything that sane and rational people should. Fraud bad. Innovation good. Prevent fraud good. Hinder innovation bad.

You've just got different internal estimates of the prevalence of fraud, the ease of deterring innovation, and the costs associated with each.

Interestingly, when people disagree like this they almost always either start talking about principles, generalities, or hypotheticals that are obviously very good or very bad. They never say "let's start with some numbers we can both agree on and see if we can figure it out together."

I think that's because people are wired to think with representative symbols (genius inventor, robber baron, welfare queen), and to weight their judgments according to their loyalty to various ideology brands.

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Re:The Worst Ideas of the Decade - Sarbanes-Oxley by lkrubner on Thursday December 24, 2009 @05:37PM (#1014487)

Even more so, you said:

"I doubt it will stop innovation"

but you admit:

"even though they are expensive"

These can't both be true. If the rules are expensive, they will stifle innovation.

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Re:The Worst Ideas of the Decade - Sarbanes-Oxley by lkrubner on Thursday December 24, 2009 @05:34PM (#1014484)

You wrote:

"I've no problem with that."

Seems like we disagree on something fundamental, if you've got no problem with Sarbanes-Oxley. I've got a lot of problems with it.

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