Monthly Archives: February 2007

SOX Seen as Good for IPOs

Jim Cramer of the TV Show Wall St. Confidential says SOX is doing good.
“I think it has served as a barrier the Securities and Exchange Commission always should have had,” Cramer said. “The SEC’s view is that everything can come public, provided that you disclose,” which is not protective of anyone.

TheStreet.com TV Recap: Sarbanes-Oxley Has Worked, By TheStreet.com Staff, 2/9/2007 2:25 PM EST

He doesn’t think SOX is inhibiting IPOs; rather there were a lot of IPOs last year, and right now there aren’t many companies ready to IPO.

Maybe it’s good risk management for companies to say what they’re doing financially.

-jsq

SOX Seen as Good for Lawyers

This article views Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) as good for lawyers:
Sarbanes-Oxley has been a veritable boon for corporate and securities lawyers across the United States. No CEO in his right mind wants to end up sharing a cell with Skilling or Ebbers or, heaven forbid, the likes of some poor fellow who knocked off a 7-Eleven for a couple of hundred bucks and a carton of Winstons. Martha Stewart might not be a bad cellmate, especially if neatness is your thing, but she has already paid her debt to society. There is a real premium these days on professional advice that will keep executives on the right side of the law and out of the slammer.

Sarbanes-Oxley is manna for lawyers By Frank Schuchat, Rocky Mountain News, February 10, 2007

So one view is of SOX as a sort of full employment act for lawyers. Continue reading →

Let a Million Data Flowers Bloom

Speaking of disseminating information to interested groups via the Internet:
The publicly funded data is down here, and we’d like flowers to grow up on the net.

Myths about the Developing World Hans Rosling, TED Talks, 2007

Back in the 1960s there was the rich world with low birthrate and long life expectancy and the poor world with high birthrate and low life expectancy. Nowadays there’s much overlap and many countries that were formerly in the poor camp are almost indistinguishable from the rich camp. Seeing China climb up one way and then the other over time sinks this concept in more effectively than reading about it. Continue reading →

Big Trust Risk

Interesting article by Ben Stein. After singing the praises of capitalism and all it’s done for him and his family, he says:

It’s built on man’s notion that he can trust his neighbor with his money, and that if the neighbor misbehaves, the law will chase him and catch him, and that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom, that even the nobles get properly handled (Bob Dylan again) once they have been caught.

Everybody’s Business: The Hard Rain That’s Falling on Capitalism, By BEN STEIN, New York Times, January 28, 2007

Or, in other words, you can say laissez faire as much as you like, but if you don’t also have contracts, judges to enforce them, and a culture of respecting them, you don’t have capitalism.

Continue reading →