Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley

Re:Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley by davidw on Monday December 22, 2008 @11:29AM (#406505)

I'm willing to buy the argument that SOX is bad for startups. It's easy to knock things, though, and harder to suggest something better. His only suggestion is to lower capital gains taxes. I think there's also an argument that if you can't trust companies' books at all, that creates problems as well.

Wikipedia has some useful information, as useful, see the 'Criticism' and 'Praise' sections:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act#Criticism

My guess is that it's one of those technical things where reworking it to keep what's good about it (making the CEO and CFO sign off on stuff sounds sensible), and dumping some of the bad bits is the best course of action.

I also have a suspicion that perhaps lack of regulations wasn't the biggest problem, but lack of regulatory enforcement with some teeth to it.

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Re:Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley by fallentimes on Monday December 22, 2008 @01:37PM (#406662)

It was conceived at the worst possible time (after Enron, Worldcom, etc); it was bound to be a failure. There's a reason why it's not wise to go shopping hungry. I agree, though, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

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