On this last Monday
there were two non-events, both with heavy political overtones:

First was the
announced resignation of Jean-Pierre Escalettes, president of the French soccer
federation, after Les Bleus’
disgraceful crash out of the first round of the World Cup with two losses and a
draw.

Second, by a
five-four vote (here), the United States Supreme Court upheld all significant aspects
the Sarbanes-Oxley law of 2002 and the structure and operation of the Public
Company Accounting Oversight Board, save only for the means of removal of PCAOB
members.

There was always
something strained and artificial about the constitutional attack mounted by a
dinky accounting firm and an anti-Sarbox advocacy organ, raising points of
eye-crossing abstraction about the scope of presidential power to appoint and
remove subordinate officials.

So perhaps not
surprisingly, the Court’s constipated decision is in kind – leaving entirely in
place the law, the agency and its members, and satisfying nobody except court
scholars perched in the highest of ivory towers.

Because, for all
the anticipatory sound and fury —

• There is this much disruption of the PCAOB’s business: None.
• There
  is this much need for legislative re-visiting of Sarbanes-Oxley: None
• There
  is this much likelihood that, with Congress on its way to summer recess and
  mid-term election season around the corner of the calendar, there is any political
  appetite to take up the multiple short-comings in the present scheme for the
  regulation of the delivery of accountancy services to public companies: None.
  

For completeness,
however, although the nature of the status
quo has been righteously endorsed as robust, across the spectrum of the
satisfied – from the Sarbanes-Oxley authors themselves (here) to the lobbying arm of the large accounting firms (here) to the head of the increasingly marginalized AICPA (here), to the SEC chairman herself (here) –

• Eight
  years and billions of dollars down the Sarbox drain, the amount of demonstrably
  beneficial deterrent effect on the global financial crisis and the performance
  of the principal actors: None.
• The
  extent to which the cries for revisions in the PCAOB’s remit or ability to act
  effectively in relation to the global market for useful and valuable audited
  financial information (see, e.g., my
  friends Francine McKenna and David Albrecht) have any chance of achieving results:
  None.
• The
  probability that rational heads will constructively address the existential
  crisis facing the survivability of the Big Four’s franchise of
  privately-provided assurance to global-scale companies, ahead of the
  catastrophic collapse of their business model: None.

Scholars of the
Supreme Court’s deliberations will debate endlessly the nuances of its
powder-puff result. Meanwhile the conversations amongst the Court’s majority wing can be re-constructed thus:

“We
can’t let this law stand. When the Constitution was written, independent
auditors hadn’t even been invented. This is not the crystalline path of our
gun-control logic (here),
from muskets in the militia to Uzis in Starbucks.”  

“No,
but if we trash the whole statute, just think of what Chris Dodd and Barney
Frank might legislate in its place, that we might just have to live with.”

“Right.
Scary. And our Wall Street friends are living just fine with an agency that is
toothless and clueless.”

“So
if we do as little as possible, it may not resemble intellectually honest conservative
orthodoxy, but it might just sell as restrained and reasonable.”

“You’ve
got my vote, Chief. But only because we can’t bring back the guillotine.”

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