Submitted by urban coyote, Aug 26, 2008 12:23

Sarbanes Oxley always was a sickly white elephant. Put it out of its misery. It's a prime example of big government gone bad, of too much undermanaged oversight. In addition to the very cogent argument that Sarbanes Oxley created a fourth branch of government, it also elevated the "bottom" of the accounting profession, the internal auditors, to a false parity with certified public accountants. For large, publicly traded companies, opinions and notes of the internal auditors are now necessary -- because posturers in the Senate were snowed by them. If Sarbanes Oxley is a great piece of legislation, then, well, how much did it help spot and limit the damage of Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae? "It didn't do anything." If Congress knows how to write accounting rules, where was the precious "oversight" on Freddie and Sallie? Congress has the resources to do this, it spends over $2 billion a year on itself. Sarbanes Oxley was a POSTURE to fix a phony problem. The problem was Enron. The CPA firm, Arthur Anderson, followed procedures in its audit, including a review by a consulting partner. The consulting partner said the hallucinated assets should cause a qualified opinion. Anderson ignored that. After Enron went broke, Anderson went to court and the consulting partner testified. Arther Anderson went broke. That was the proper resolution. The systems worked. The system wasn't broke. Senator Sarbanes felt a compulsion to fix something out of a strong personal sense of posturing. I am a retired certified public accountant. I'm not guessing about these things.

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