The New York Times’ Joseph Nocera has written a couple of real doozy op-eds recently, one extolling the “lofty standards” of New York AG Eliot Spitzer and another one defending the virtues of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the latter of which contained a quote or two from UCLA law professor and well-known corporate law blogger, Stephen Bainbridge.
In this Tech Central Station op-ed, Professor Bainbridge dissects Nocera’s argument in favor of SOX and exposes the legislation for what it is — a knee-jerk legislative reaction to a brief spike in corporate accounting scandals that arose after the bursting of the late 1990’s stock market bubble. As Bainbridge lucidly points out, SOX neither makes such scandals less likely to occur nor improves the functioning of public-equity financing markets.
Advantage Bainbridge.