The article below was sent from a dear friend of mine and fellow SOX enthusiast, Clark Keeler, Director, BPM. I find the article to have a significant amount of irony considering it claims that "American business people of a conservative nature have been dreaming about driving a stake through the heart of the Sarbanes-Oxley act ever since the legislation was passed..." It would seem to me that if a person was truly fiscally conservative, they would consider Sarbanes-Oxley to be the prudent choice rather than the radical one. Internal controls require there to be a check point in a business procedure that requires someone other than the preparer of the documentation to verify the accuracy of what was prepared. This verification prevents someone from acting alone when making decisions about shareholder assets (physical assets, capital, intangible assets, etc). I am of the opinion that this double check adds a necessary layer of review considering the potential for fraud, errors, omissions, etc. Considering all that we at Vibato, LLC have found when testing internal controls, this is no longer just opinion but rather, fact. Read more on the article here:
“Two cheers for Sarbanes-Oxley
The Supreme Court gets it right by tweaking, but not overturning, the controversial legislation
Jun 29th 2010
AMERICAN business people of a conservative nature have been dreaming about driving a stake through the heart of the Sarbanes-Oxley act ever since the legislation was passed, back in 2002, in the wake of the Enron, Tyco, WorldCom and Global Crossing scandals. George Bush rightly described the legislation as “the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt”. But to its critics it is far-reaching in the wrong direction. The American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think-tank, has dismissed Sarbox as a “colossal failure”. Ron Paul, a Texan libertarian, has argued that it puts America at a competitive disadvantage. The Wall Street Journal thunders that it has “imposed hundreds of billions of dollars in costs on business with no noticeable decline in financial scandals”. Newt Gingrich has urged Congress, the body that he once dominated, to repeal the act.”
