House Democrats John Adler, Carolyn Maloney Move To Weaken Investor Protection Bill

[Amerigo Vespucci]

House Democrats John Adler, Carolyn Maloney Move To Weaken Investor Protection Bill



Two House Democrats are planning to introduce amendments Tuesday to exempt small- and medium-sized companies from a key post-Enron reform. Consumer advocates and investor groups say that the proposed exemptions would severely undercut protection for investors and increase the chances for financial fraud.

Reps. John Adler of New Jersey and Carolyn Maloney of New York will attempt to amend the Investor Protection Act of 2009 -- a bill designed to beef up investor protection -- by adding in provisions that will undermine the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the 2002 law designed to increase investor confidence that was enacted after accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom rocked investors. The law was supposed to improve the accuracy, reliability, and transparency of corporate financial reporting by requiring firms to audit their financial statements and internal controls.

Adler, a member of the pro-business New Democrat Coalition, is proposing to exempt publicly-traded firms with market capitalization less than $700 million from a provision of Sarbanes-Oxley mandating an external audit of the firm.

Specifically, Adler's provision calls for "less stringent requirements" for these firms, and would require the Securities and Exchange Commission -- the federal watchdog overseeing the capital markets -- to develop rules that would ease the "burden" on these firms. But until the SEC developed those rules, firms worth less than $700 million would be completely exempt from mandated external audits.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/27/house-democrats-john-adle_n_334876.html

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/27/house-democrats-john-adle_n_334876.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Maloney I can understand.

Her district is Manhattan. The City depends upon taxing the rewards of Wall Street, depends on the brokers and their higher ups to go wining and dining instead of bringing brown bags to their desks and going home for dinner, depends on the profits of investment banks to subsidize the City's budget.

Her choice is purely for her district, not for investors who have been cheated out of their lives' savings.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Adler's from Ocean County, which isn't the hotbed, but...

anyone from NJ is pro "small" business when there are around 15,000 or so manufacturing and tech operations there. The demise of AT&T, ITT, and RCA as research centers hasn't helped, and that 15,000 number was when I lived there and may be quite a bit smaller now.

Maloney, in case anyone forgot, is one of those some here insisted should run in a primary against Gillibrand.