Sarbanes-Oxley Goes to Supreme Court

On May 18, 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear a constitutional challenge to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a law that mandated costly accounting procedures of questionable effectiveness in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Attorneys from the Competitive Enterprise Institute are serving as co-counsel in the case, representing pro bono a small accounting firm in Nevada burdened by the Sarbox mandates. CEI's John Berlau, writer of the popular Youtube public policy video "Sarbanes-Oxley and Tattoos," explains the nuts and bolts of Sarbox in this video, and why Sarbox overhaul is now needed more than ever to bring growth to this sluggish economy. Berlau explains how issuing stock has traditionally helped smaller companies during a debt shortage, but how Sarbox means a brick wall -- through the tripling of audit costs -- for companies that try to go public now. Berlau shows how Sarbanes-Oxley did not catch the current scandals and harms honest entrepreneurs, and shows why repealing it could be one of the best economic stimulus packages we could have.