Will He Certify That It Is Accurate

Reader W sent in this interesting observation by one of Mark Kleiman’s readers:

Did you notice that our esteemed President essentially committed securities fraud in representing that private investment accounts WILL perform better than anything the present system could do? Certainly, no one can honestly make that statement and any stockbroker making such a statement would be violating Rule 10b 5 of the Securities Act of 1934.

To which Kleiman added:

Which reminds me of my favorite snarky policy suggestion: How about applying the Sarbanes-Oxley certification process to budget submissions and other communications from the Executive to Congress or the public? Someone ought to be prepared to say about each submission, “Yes, I understand what’s in this document, and certify that it is accurate.”

This is another good line of argument. I think it hits a certain common sense chord to say that the president is overselling the market, especially right now. People just went through a very thorough retrenchment with their 401k’s and are very well aware that the market does not always go up. We should force the Republicans to explain why people should feel confident that they are guaranteed to make more money in the market as Bush says they will. And after they sputter their bromides about the long term gains in the last 70 years, blah,blah,blah, perhaps the Democratic spokesperson or legislator ought to turn around and say “everyone knows past performance is no guarantor of future returns. It’s the most basic and essential disclaimer given by anyone who works with stocks and bonds.”

Since we are talking about exposing millions of retirees to the stock market, shouldn’t the president be willing to apply the same rules to himself and certify his proposal with the standard Oxley-Sarbanes disclaimer: “Yes, I understand what’s in this document, and certify that it is accurate.”

It would be an interesting television moment anyway.