Posted on 01/22/2007 6:55:35 AM PST by presidio9
The gilded world of Wall Street may lose up to 60,000 jobs in just five years unless cumbersome government regulations are dumped and replaced by looser European-style ones, according to a sweeping new study.
Mayor Bloomberg and Sen. Chuck Schumer were set today to unveil the bleak report, which warns that the city could lose as much as $25 billion in cash flows that Wall Street now generate unless their blueprint for revising securities regulations is heeded.
Among the changes proposed: Setting up a new congressional panel to oversee financial services; cutting Homeland Security red tape to make it easier for foreign experts to obtain working visas; and creating a special international zone here, an "open city" that would allow businesses to operate under a more liberal set of tax and regulatory rules than ordinarily allowed in the U.S.
Bloomberg and Schumer have been leading the charge to revise some of the onerous rules of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was created to attack corporate corruption. According to critics, it has instead mainly quadrupled accounting costs for public corporations and driven initial public offerings to London or Asia, where they can be done for less money.
"The last thing that New York and the country need is to wake up one morning and find we are no longer the financial capital of the world," Sen. Schumer said in a statement ahead of the unveiling of the weighty 134-page report.
"This report shows what could happen not just for IPOs, but for all financial services, all too easily and all too soon. We must take measures outlined in the report now to avoid the possibility of that happening."
Other proposed changes in the report include:
* Draft concise guidelines for the sometimes ambiguous rules of the Sarbanes-Oxley
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
"Setting up a new congressional panel to oversee financial services," yes, that should make things better, put Congress in charge of this, as if Sarbanes-Oxley didn't cause enough trouble. Not. Also, "cutting Homeland Security red tape to make it easier for foreign experts to obtain working visas." Why do I smell a huge rat, and hear someone crying wolf in the background? I am hugely sceptical of anything Schumer has to say on this subject, he was one of the driving forces behind passage of Sarbanes-Oxley in the first place.
Why should the 'rats care. They see everybody on Wall Street as Gordon Gekko.
Sarbanes Oxley has been a disaster for Wall. St. IPOs. This twit Spitzer can't see past more and more regulation.
Chuckie supporting this? Did a pig just fly by?
an "open city" that would allow businesses to operate under a more liberal set of tax and regulatory rules than ordinarily allowed in the U.S.
Sure.....It's ok if the rest of the nation is tied up by Sarbanes-Oxley, just not NYC.
They should care, becuase a lot of their NY money comes from those Gordon Gekkos and indirectly trhough them. Every effiminate art dealer who donates who the dems depends on Wall St. for his money.
"Sometimes ambiguous?" My company spent 4 weeks getting ready for a SOX audit, and every day, there were questions as to what needed to be done. If you call in 3 different consultants for those audits, you'll get 3 different answers! Compliance costs are soaring!
Mark
You do not see Senator Chucky wailing about obscene bonuses paid to Wall St biggies. It is big oil, which actually produces a product that he whines about. He realizes that his bread is buttered with cash from Wall St, and thus he will do their bidding.
I worked for a mid-sized (1200-1300 folks) communications company. SOX cost them $2M the first year alone.
Shortly after that the company laid off 20% of the workforce, I can't point to SOX directly, but it cut into profits in a big way.
The FedGov does not help - it mostly hurts. By thwe time SOX came out the Enron things had run its course and investors wised up a bit. Changes in the IRA tax code made more of a difference.
That's because the federal government decides that they need to make the rules for industries and technologies that they don't know the first thing about!
Another great example is HIPPA... What a nightmare for the medical industry AND those who have to do computer and data processing support for them!
Mark
SOX will be the eventual destruction of what little remains of capitalism in this country. The law is so vague that companies have little choice but to apply it in a blanket fashion down to the lowest echelons of their management structure. SOX has also been called the accountant and attorney full employment act.
Of course, large corporations do not dislike or fear SOX since it relieves them from the need to engage independent and ethical due diligence. Just another example of the difference between capitalism and corporatism.
It is worth noting that Mike Oxley is a Republican.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.