Inflated Tech Valuations? Blame Uncle Sam

sounds bubbleicious to me ...

He only provides two hard data points, seven paragraphs in. "A 2008 study by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission found the average cost of Sarbox compliance is $2.3 million per year. A whopping 70 percent of all smaller public companies said compliance costs have prompted them to consider going private, and 77 percent of smaller foreign firms reported considering abandoning their American listings."

The first point, about average cost, includes companies of all size. Larger companies will have larger compliance costs, smaller will lower costs. Without some correlation between size of company and costs, the average tells me nothing.

As for companies who "considered" going private, he doesn't say how many companies actually followed through due to Sarbanes-Oxley costs. My guess is it's much closer to zero than seventy percent, or else he would have used that number.

Yeah, that isn't a stretch at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_M._Jackson

I don't think everyone would agree that it's the government's fault that there's a valuation bubble, and I personally think that Sarbanes-Oxley has nothing to do with it.