The "JOBS" Bill

When I first heard about the bipartisan JOBS (Jump-start Our Business Start-ups) bill, I didn't pay a lot of attention, figuring it was just some innocuous bit of legislation with a politically attractive acronym. Well, I was wrong. I should have remembered one of my first laws of American politics:

Bipartisan means everybody gets screwed.

What the bill does is gut financial regulations put in place after the Enron debacle, and then some. When this bill is signed into law by Our President (yes, he's in on it too), companies going public can ignore many important auditing requirements, keep executive compensation a secret, and market shares directly to consumers over the internet. Five'll get you ten the JOBS Act's most outstanding accomplishment will be a massive explosion of fraud.

Here's how to do it, amateur grifters. Incorporate; announce your IPO; create some buzz with posts to consumer finance blogs; sell blocks of stock for relatively small sums, say fifty or one hundred dollars; take all the money from sales and pay it to yourself as an undisclosed executive salary; declare bankruptcy.

It's so easy, even a Congressman could do it.