New York Times' Paul Krugman: 'Ron Paul Is A Friend of Corporate Fraud'

New York Times' columnist and Democratic shill Paul Krugman writes a short hit piece on Ron Paul in his Times' blog today. He claims to have done some research for tomorrow's column (possibly on Ron Paul?) and discovered a horrifying revelation that Paul opposes one of the most diabolical, vile, and putrid anti-free enterprise, anti-business regulations known in America: (gasp!) the Sarbanes-Oxley law. (Horrors!!!)

Krugman block quotes a paragraph of an April 2005 Times piece, in which it stated, in part, that Ron Paul, in his official capacity as a Republican congressman from Texas who outright espoused his opposition to the provisions of the act, introduced a bill to repeal Section 404 of the law completely. Ron was quoted as saying in the piece:

[The provision] has raised the costs of doing business, thus causing foreign companies to withdraw from American markets and retarding economic growth.

Section 404 states:

Section 404 requires companies and their auditors to assess the companies’ internal controls, which are the practices or systems for keeping records and preventing abuse or fraud.

Krugman then proceeds to sandbag Paul with the following:

Ron Paul, enemy of the Iraq war — and friend of corporate fraud?

This is the same Krugman who hints that Ron Paul supporters just "doesn't know about" these "scathing" skeletons in Ron's closet.

Krugman would have a clue if he had done his homework by learning that:

1. Ron Paul supporters, who are fairly libertarian/intellectual on the issues and honest to a fault, know exactly the destructive effects of Sarbanes-Oxley and are far more knowledgeable about this matter and other things than the Mitt Romney and Billary groupies who don't know a thing about the law. After all, those who are not affected by Sarbanes-Oxley have no clue as to what the law is about and how it hurts businesses and their employees from the top down.


2. Anti-totalitarian, anti-statist, anti-collectivist, anti-social engineering, and pro-freedom people support Ron Paul because he opposes Big Government and does dare to speak out against the establishment's pet programs.


3. Sarbanes-Oxley is totally unfair, unjustified, and ridiculous, considering it micromanages private management by forcing them to do costly internal audits of their financial operations, when most of them can find ways around them or just ignore them altogether. Plus, it is terribly convoluted and very vague in specifics. Moreover, it has led to significant stock decline and utter bankruptcy for companies, some big and mostly small.

If Krugman thinks that companies should and must be regulated, especially when their financial reporting must be closely watched by the government, then perhaps he's forgotten that the SEC has been outed as a failure for efficiently auditing its financial operations and keeping itself under financial control.

(Special thanks to KD for her look into Krugman's nonsense as well.)