CNBC reports: “One woman believes that companies can send jobs to rural areas and save just as much as they could sending them to places like India.” An entrepreneur has created Rural Sourcing, an information technology contracting company that aims to compete with India-based outsourcing firms. What would Paul Craig Roberts have to
Indian outsourcing companies say SOX accounting regulations are helping their businesses grow 50% per year, according to the WSJ ($). They offer software, database management and compliance related services at one third the cost of a U.S. accounting firm. Public companies are expected to spend $5.8 billion on compliance in 2005. The law requires
The militarist Frank Gaffney, head of the Boeing-funded Center for Security Policy, has been leading the charge to prevent shareholders of Unocal from selling their company to Chinese oil company CNOOC. In recent congressional testimony , he urged the federal government to intervene to prevent this merger on national security grounds. He wildly
Chevron raised its bid for Unocal to $63.01 per share, compared with CNOOC’s bid worth $65.50. Unocal directors approved the Chevron bid, as Chevron’s bid is favored by the U.S. government and faces less regulatory harassment. Chevron has been lobbying intensely to raise the expense and political risk of CNOOC’s bid. It employed Wayne Berman, a
Michael Oxley, Republican co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, admitted during a London conference that the law “was not a perfect document” and that some of it was “excessive.” He complained that after WorldCom collapsed, “it was difficult to legislate responsibly in that type of hot-house atmosphere.” He added: “But I am proud of the bill.”
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was supposed to enhance corporate governance, but the law is diluting the quality of the boards of directors which are responsible for governance. In a Grant Thornton LLP survey , 65% of senior financial executives of public companies say it is more difficult to recruit corporate directors due to fears about director
Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) proposed a protectionist amendment to energy legislation that is designed to derail CNOOC Ltd’s acquisition of Unocal. Pombo’s proposal “would require the Energy Department to identify all of the energy assets China has sought to invest in [and] review whether China’s investments in energy assets have been done on
The $1.4 billion Wall Street research settlement, devised by New York politician Eliot Spitzer, compels investment banks to pay their “independent” rivals to publish competing investment research reports. This is necessary, Spitzer argued, to give investors access to research that is not tainted by conflict of interest. Banking conflicts, he said,
60 Minutes recently profiled what it called a conspiracy of hedge funds and stock research analysts to drive down the stock price of a Canadian drug company called Biovail. Joe Nocera of the New York Times did an admirable job of debunking this story and clarifying how markets actually work, versus the impression that markets are corruptly
Taxes have a long and ugly history. The pharaohs, of course, were big taxers and spenders. You don’t build pyramids stuffed with luxury goods for the next life by letting your constituents buy untaxed corn. Even Solomon the Wise squeezed his subjects like the vintners squeezed grapes. A thousand wives means a thousand wedding rings and a thousand
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.