Thank you for the response and the links, Easy. There was some thought-provoking reading therein.
The first thesis was interesting.
Essentially the conclusion was that professional fees attributable to SOX compliance do not scale directly as compared to company asset size. Not particularly newsworthy, and as economies of scale factor into nearly everything and this has always been the case for smaller companies who need higher quality legal and accounting guidance.
The author also noted "corporate executives believe that there are enormous improvements from Sarbanes-Oxley in their control structure that wouldn’t have been implemented without the issue being forced. These executives also believe that they are able to make better decisions for their businesses as a result of SOX."
My quibble with the second academic article is that the author essentially measures cost in a non statistical comparison of market returns for SOX compliant versus not. Many factors other than SOX play into such analysis, and the author ignores that SOX compliance likely results in more conservative financials which translate into lower market cap.
Here is what I submit you are perhaps not giving sufficient weight in this discussion- the fact that "insiders" and wealthy institutions are categorically against any form of increased regulation. Their response has become predictably knee-jerk, and these folks are behind the majority of the anti-SOX commentary.
For instance, one can not take any study sponsored by The Heritage Foundation (your third link) as being anything other than script supporting their political manifesto. Seriously, these folks have penned article after article written by in-house "academics" expressing outrage that firms specifically like Goldman Sachs have come under scrutiny.
I don't want to sound too negative, as I think we may have some middle ground here. SOX certainly was not perfect, neither was the Securities Act of 1933, nor anything else coming out of Washington. But it does provide additional assurance for retail investors who have borne a disproportionate amount of the pain and suffering of recent scandals and frauds. Whether a perfect system exists is a matter for debate, but I have little optimism our country has the political will to really work the sleaze completely out of the system.
Now lets look at our company, MDMN. Have you scrutinized the latest financials? Are you aware of any other publicly-held companies whose financials contain typographical errors as well as incomplete schedules? Embarrassing to say the least. We won't even discuss the underlying accounting (really, "extraordinary income" resulting from insider's returning common stock back to the company now in the form of treasury stock, my goodness, give me a break!).
Do you believe that if management presents financial statements for public dissemination that said statements should be accurate? Why would the company NOT engage an actual licensed CPA firm to associate with their compilation? We are not talking SOX compliance here, no internal control review would be mandated, but at the very least, we would have the assurance that someone with credentials and INDEPENDENCE is associated. The cost of this would not be significant, especially when contrasted with the last six month's "Management Fees" of $135,000+.
Sorry to go on so, but until we force management's feet to the fire to recognize the elephant in the room (lack of credibility), we're stuck with pitiful stock performance and the comedies of amateur hour. My adjusted basis is nearly $0.13/share and I've had it up to here with the continued bungling...
