Sarbanes-Oxley, Affordable Energy and the Nanny State
1. BUSINESS
Mortgage giant Countrywide Financial attempts to avoid
a Justice Department investigation into its lending practices.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects
Counsel Hans
Bader on the ineffectiveness of federal
business regulations:
“Under the Sarbanes-Oxley law, regulators have imposed
incredibly expensive requirements for auditing American businesses, costing our
economy $35 billion annually, and reducing the value of the U.S. stock market
by hundreds of billions of dollars. But it did nothing to stop Countrywide
Financial from making risky mortgage loans to irresponsible borrowers with bad
credit, as CEI’s John
Berlau explains, even though Countrywide was a ‘paragon’ of Sarbanes-Oxley
compliance. The reason is that Sarbanes-Oxley regulations focus attention on
the trivia of companies’ ‘internal controls,’ such as which employee has access
to which computer password, rather than important things that really matter to
a company’s long-run financial health and survival.”
2. ENVIRONMENT
Critics respond to CEI’s latest TV
ad campaign on affordable energy.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo
Lewis on the message
behind the ad:
“The ads skewer the hypocrisy of Al Gore and other
celebrities who advocate an energy diet for an energy-starved world while they
enjoy the high-energy lifestyle of the super-rich. Our point was not that Gore
is a bad man because he fails to practice what he preachers, but that he is a
preacher of sham virtue. His lifestyle refutes his message. Not even Gore, one
of the world’s richest and most powerful men, can afford to live ‘beyond
petroleum’ for even one minute.”
3. NANNY STATE
A Connecticut public school makes headlines for suspending
an 8th grade honors student.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar Doug
Bandow on the nature of the
student’s crime:
“It’s good to know that the administrators of Sheridan
Middle School in New Haven are on top of their game. When two students engaged
in a dangerous transaction involving illicit goods, the school acted. It busted
the two kids for…trading a bag of Skittles candy. America, land of the free?
Think again!”
Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated
throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.
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