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March 16, 2004
Return to Corporate Capitalism
Treasury Secretary John Snow Discusses Sarbanes-Oxley
as 24th Cohen Lecturer
The impact of corporate accountability legislation on
corporate capitalism in a post-scandal world served as a major theme of
US Secretary of the Treasury John Snow’s (JD ’67) presentation
as the GW Law School’s 24th Annual Manuel F. Cohen Memorial Lecturer
March 3.
Snow touched on the nation’s economic status, disputed job-development
figures and record-high productivity levels, but his remarks on the influence
of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on corporate accountability drew the
most attention from the crowd in the Law School’s Moot Courtroom.
“In a very significant way I think our system of capitalism itself
is deeply threatened” by the corporate accounting scandals of 2002,
Snow said.
He argued that the legitimacy of the market place is based on trust, and
when corporate financial statements become works of fiction rather than
solid numbers fairly representing the condition of the enterprise, the
foundation of the country’s economic system is threatened.
“You don’t cook the books,” Snow said. “Somehow, perhaps
influenced by the infectious greed of the ’90s, we lost our way.
Every single level of the gate-keeping process broke down.”
He added “I think Sarbanes-Oxley… was an absolute necessity.
It was a necessity to show that government was engaged to clean up the
mess. I think what Sarbanes-Oxley really does is restore the tenets of
corporate capitalism. It says boards have to be responsible.”
Snow’s address provided a complement to last year’s Cohen lecturer,
Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D–MD), who co-authored the law governing corporate
accountability.
The Manuel F. Cohen Memorial Lecture, created by the friends and colleagues
of Cohen, was established at the Law School in 1979. This endowed lecture
series serves as a living memorial to Cohen, a leader in the field of
securities law, a dedicated public servant, former chairman of the Securities
and Exchange Commission, legal scholar and a teacher at the Law School
for nearly two decades.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
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