The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. INTERNATIONAL
The European Union approves a new law, known as “REACH,” regulating the manufacture and use of chemicals.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Director of Risk & Environmental Policy Angela Logomasini on the wider implications of the new rules:
“Since nothing is 100 percent safe, the standard grants regulators arbitrary power to regulate politically unpopular products. REACH represents the most significant codification of the precautionary principle ever, and it is likely to encourage other policymakers to offer similar proposals.”
2. ENERGY
Big businesses lobby decision makers in Washington over dependence on foreign oil.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Energy Policy Myron Ebell on the need to allow greater domestic oil and gas exploration:
“There are several important reasons to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge [to energy exploration]. First, contrary to claims by environmental pressure groups that the oil and gas ANWR potentially contains are only a few “drops in the bucket” and that oil companies are not interested in exploring ANWR’s coastal plain, the U.S. Geological Survey’s mean estimate of economically recoverable oil and gas reserves under the coastal plain of ANWR is 10.4 billion barrels of crude oil. Such an amount would increase proven U. S. crude oil reserves by 50% and is equivalent to approximately a quarter century of current imports from Saudi Arabia, one of our top foreign suppliers.”
3. BUSINESS
The Securities and Exchange Commission releases its recommendations for reform of the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting regulations.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Center for Entrepreneurship Director John Berlau on the costs of Sarbanes-Oxley:
“There have been many estimates of Sarbanes-Oxley’s costs. It has raised the overall cost of operating as a public company by 130 percent, according to the law firm Foley and Lardner. It has added 30,700 man-hours for each firm, according to the trade group Financial Executives International. Additional time that you have to spend complying with accounting is time that you can’t spend on developing your product. A Korn-Ferry survey found on average $5 million in costs devoted to this for Fortune 1000 firms.”