August 24, 2005
Take a Chill Pill Alex
How can anyone dispute that internal controls are bad? The law is written such that management must provide reasonable assurance not absolute assurance. If there have been problems it is mainly due to auditors finally being governed by someone other than a peer group. They are not under scrutiny and some have made unreasonable requests for proof from their clients.
This where the CFO's and Audit Committees must know their facts about the law and stand their ground. The law is a good law. This is proven by the number of material weaknesses that continue to be reported each week.
And as far as the SEC being able to review records, they have had those rights since 1933/34. If you are a public company, expect scrutiny. You took the public's money and now you have to prove that you are using it wisely. That is the deal. That much has not changed.
An excerpt from Alex Epstein's rant about Sarbanes-Oxley is here:
"Such behavior is now rampant in corporate America. One study documents businesses engaging in practices like “requiring an auditor to attend a meeting to prove it took place” and “proving that all of the physical keys to an office in Europe have been accounted for since it opened in 1995”! “Even a completely harmless error that nobody cares about,” says a lawyer who handles Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, “takes up hundreds and hundreds of hours of the auditors, the CEO, the CFO and the audit committee.”That America’s honest, productive businessmen are spending their time and shareholder money to “prove” they are not criminals--when they could be spending those hours and dollars on R&D, new product launches, or mergers and acquisitions--is a monumental injustice.
Is it any wonder that misery among top executives is reported throughout corporate America, that top executives are departing at record rates, that businesses are “hunkering down”? Is it any wonder that the direct and indirect costs of Sarbanes-Oxley to shareholders have been estimated by a University of Rochester economist as $1.4 trillion? Sarbanes-Oxley is a moral and economic atrocity.
It is past time to repeal this monstrous law and start treating businessmen as American citizens: innocent until proven otherwise."
For his complete rant, click here.
For a cost effective way not to spend too much but to properly comply with the law, see www.issuescentral.com and learn more about Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Playbo0ok(tm).
This where the CFO's and Audit Committees must know their facts about the law and stand their ground. The law is a good law. This is proven by the number of material weaknesses that continue to be reported each week.
And as far as the SEC being able to review records, they have had those rights since 1933/34. If you are a public company, expect scrutiny. You took the public's money and now you have to prove that you are using it wisely. That is the deal. That much has not changed.
An excerpt from Alex Epstein's rant about Sarbanes-Oxley is here:
"Such behavior is now rampant in corporate America. One study documents businesses engaging in practices like “requiring an auditor to attend a meeting to prove it took place” and “proving that all of the physical keys to an office in Europe have been accounted for since it opened in 1995”! “Even a completely harmless error that nobody cares about,” says a lawyer who handles Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, “takes up hundreds and hundreds of hours of the auditors, the CEO, the CFO and the audit committee.”That America’s honest, productive businessmen are spending their time and shareholder money to “prove” they are not criminals--when they could be spending those hours and dollars on R&D, new product launches, or mergers and acquisitions--is a monumental injustice.
Is it any wonder that misery among top executives is reported throughout corporate America, that top executives are departing at record rates, that businesses are “hunkering down”? Is it any wonder that the direct and indirect costs of Sarbanes-Oxley to shareholders have been estimated by a University of Rochester economist as $1.4 trillion? Sarbanes-Oxley is a moral and economic atrocity.
It is past time to repeal this monstrous law and start treating businessmen as American citizens: innocent until proven otherwise."
For his complete rant, click here.
For a cost effective way not to spend too much but to properly comply with the law, see www.issuescentral.com and learn more about Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Playbo0ok(tm).
