The Sarbanes bill will hand American corporations back to the trial lawyers for summary execution.
If the CEO of a $50-billion corporation operating in 112 countries is required to sign a document saying he guarantees under penalty of law that all these numbers are correct, there's not a CEO in America that will sign it.
[It is a] collectivist [myth that business people] would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs, fraudulent securities, and shoddy buildings….It is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.
Too long have we introduced carelessly into the stream of our national life alien philosophies of government control and foreign ideas of repression of the individual that have no place in this land of freedom. It is time to rout them out. It is time for all of us to realize that we want and intend to have for our own and later generations the American pattern of life and the American freedom of opportunity which these foreign ideas and theories and plans have been shouldering out of the picture.
I submit, however, that no man who himself has any practical acquaintance with business processes and methods who is not utterly blinded by partisan political considerations can examine the Securities Act, the Stock Exchange Act, the successive revenue acts in recent years, the Social Security Act, the Public Utilities Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act and many of the arbitrary regulations devised under a dozen other recent acts and arrive at any verdict other than they cripple and retard business rather than help revive it. The fact is even so clear that it is hard to keep from wondering if such a result were not actually intended.
So far as I know, we as a people have not reached any decision to abandon our accustomed type of life; up to date we have looked upon the officers of government not as masters but as servants of the people, and we have looked upon ourselves, the people, as master of our destiny. While, as I say, we have not reached any decision to abandon this philosophy, it seems to me that we are acting in many respects as if we had. ... If we really are in favor of changing our basic economic order, we must be prepared to abandon our present form of government along with it; for if we expect government to do our thinking planning and spending for us, we must be prepared to remove from government the necessity of submitting itself to frequent popular election. Otherwise, we shall have a planned economy, the plan of which changes whenever an election campaign approaches.
We feel that it is not in the public interest to require any and all information respecting the business of any bank be made a public record, and ask that the banks be required to submit information to the Federal Reserve Board only that such information be given confidential status, subject to the discretion of the Federal Reserve Board.
Establishment of minimum margins for banks is unfair and unnecessarily restrictive in principle.
The national securities act of 1934, as proposed, would interfere in a vital way with the essential supply of capital to business.
The Securities Act of 1933 created a serious obstacle to recovery, through its drastic regulation of the issuance of new securities by private enterprise. The Banking Act of 1933 created an additional impediment through the provisions of Section 16 prohibiting the national banks from participating in underwriting securities after June 16, 1934.
