Posted by Nicholas at January 4, 2007 01:09 AMA few days ago, Perry de Havilland suggested the rather cute idea of erecting statues of the US Senators who cooked up the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting law, on the grounds that this law has encouraged many firms into listing their businesses outside the United States and holding Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) outside Jefferson's Republic. London's stock market has benefited from this, as have bourses such as the Amsterdam Euronext, for instance. I do not know whether some of the impact of S-O has been exaggerated — this may be the case — but there is no doubt that from a regulatory point of view, the United States is not quite the model of laissez-faire capitalism that its supporters or indeed opponents imagine it to be. In fact, the US has been becoming a regulatory hell-hole for some time, such as with the recent crackdown on online gambling, to take one example.
Johnathan Pearce, "Another wrecker of US capitalism steps down", Samizdata, 2007-01-03
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