Another week, another foolish attempt from Washington to impose a simple solution to our economy’s complex problems. And as usual, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is right in the middle of things.
Witness legislation from a gaggle of Republican Congressmen that seeks to exempt far more companies from Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Their bill would exempt all companies with market capitalization of $500 million or less, and exempt all companies from $500 million to $1 billion for the first five years after their initial public offering. Just days later the Senate countered with its own anti-regulation bill, the Regulatory Time-Out Act, proposing a one-year moratorium on pretty much every new regulation any agency might want to impose on anyone.
