Since becoming chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Christopher Cox has been advancing the idea of a new, electronically based system of disclosure that will both improve the information available to investors and reduce the disclosure and reporting costs of companies. This new system, which the chairman calls...

The life of Alexander Hamilton was the most dramatic and improbable among the Founding Fathers, second only in importance to that of George Washington. In his lecture, Ron Chernow will narrate many of the dramatic moments that transformed this brilliant, orphaned, illegitimate young man from the Caribbean into the aide-de-camp...

Neither Herbert Hoover nor Franklin D. Roosevelt promulgated policies that worked.

In recent years, accountants have begun to recognize that financial statements prepared under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) cannot adequately communicate the value of companies that use internally generated intangible assets--such as software or pharmaceutical designs--to produce their revenues and profits. Since 80 percent of the value of the...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted by Congress last year in response to corporate scandals at Enron and elsewhere, establishes a new and costly regulatory structure simply to assure that financial statements are properly audited. But financial statements, no matter how well-audited, have inherent deficiencies well summarized by the...