Of all the economists, Milton Friedman has been the one who has provided the conservative movement against activist governments with intellectual grunt. The Nobel Laureate is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of our time and, at the age of 93, he remains a champion of the free market and savage critic of government intervention.
No surprises then that he attacks Sarbanes-Oxley as bad law in this interview. Consider the following:
"I think Sarbanes-Oxley is a terrible law…Here you say to every CEO in the country: you've got to swear to the accuracy of things you can't possibly know. You're going to make a perjurer of him. And you say to him, for God sakes whatever you do, don't take risks. We've been having something of a slowdown, not in the economy as a whole thanks to the housing boom. But in what I describe as the healthy party of the economy: manufacturing, services, etc., the free market part of the economy. And one of the reasons why I think we've been having this slow down is because Sarbanes-Oxley is saying to CEOs, for god sakes don't take any risks. And yet progress depends on doing risk. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs."
The question of whether regulation is creating more risk-averse companies is a good point. However, Friedman has no answers when asked how a free market would address the way auditors certified the accuracy of corporate accounts that turned out to be a fiction. There are some things markets just can't fix.
The better question is how can anyone defend putting CEOs in jail or forcing them to cop pleas over matters that, as Friedman notes and as you must certainly understand, they couldn’t possibly know.
There are many reasons why SOX is a terrible law, but that’s probably the most obvious. It makes a total mockery of justice.
Also not covered in the interview and noted by WSJ on Saturday–
WSJ: Sarbanes Oxley May Be Reviving Shareholder Class-Action “Strike” Suits
http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=1205