… to prep for raising the interest rate.
February 24, 2010
November 24, 2009
Is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on its last legs?
Looks like it. In this topsy-turvy political world Sarbox was ushered in by a GOP-controlled Congress and is being systematically gutted by a Democratic Congress. Of course one the unintended consequences of Sarbox was an untenable burden on small business. Wall Street was going to motor along, accounting firms were going to bank and Main Street was going to take it on the chin once again.
From the link:
The House Financial Services Committee has approved an amendment to the Investor Protection Act of 2009 to allow most companies to never comply with the law, and mandating a study to see whether it would be a good idea to exempt additional companies as well.
Some veterans of past reform efforts were left sputtering with rage. “That the Democratic Party is the vehicle for overturning the most pro-investor legislation in the past 25 years is deeply disturbing,” said Arthur Levitt, a Democrat who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under former President Clinton. “Anyone who votes for this will bear the investors’ mark of Cain.”
Those who favored the amendment saw it differently. They were simply out to help small businesses, which would be burdened by having to report on whether they maintained acceptable financial controls, and to have auditors check on whether those controls worked.
There are other threats to Sarbanes-Oxley as well.
November 5, 2009
No more Sarb-Ox for small business?
This should be welcome news.
From the link:
Small businesses would be granted a permanent reprieve from complying with part of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform laws, under a draft U.S. House of Representatives bill discussed on Tuesday.
Small companies have not had to comply fully with the rules since the Sarbanes-Oxley law was approved in 2002 in response to the Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals.
Companies with a market capitalization below $75 million have argued that they faced disproportionately higher costs compared with larger companies and have convinced regulators to delay compliance at least five times.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is now requiring small companies to report on the effectiveness of their internal controls as of June 15, 2010.
But Republicans, hoping to thwart this SEC requirement, introduced an amendment on Tuesday to a House Financial Services Committee draft bill to do just that.
January 8, 2009
November 20, 2008
The Fed is dreaming …
… of happy bunnies and warm milk.
Or, in other words, who believes this horseshit anymore? Really.
From the link:
Taking care not to declare victory, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the secretary of the treasury told Congress on Tuesday that the unprecedented rescue efforts over the past eight weeks appear to have prevented the collapse of financial markets and returned them to a semblance of normalcy.
Reviewing the progress of the Wall Street rescue package that Congress passed Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said that stability had returned after the surprise decision to inject $250 billion into U.S. banks and thrifts, coupled with the Fed’s decision to bypass banks and lend directly to U.S. corporations in need of capital.
“These actions, together with similar measures in many other countries, appeared to stabilize the situation and to improve investor confidence in financial firms,” Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee.
Defending his implementation of the rescue effort, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said success must be judged by what hadn’t happened instead of what had.
In the old west Paulson and Bernanke would have been rode out of town along with their spilling bag of snake oil by now.