IRVINE, CA -- Just as the War on Terrorism dissipates into total inaction, our leaders have launched a new war to replace it: the War on CEOs.
      "In reaction to a few cases in which corporate CEOs allegedly violated existing laws against fraud," said Robert Tracinski, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "the Senate has passed a comprehensive set of new regulations designed to punish the leaders of all of the nation's corporations." These regulations, Tracinski predicts, will have the following results:
         o The harsher the "reforms" passed, the more the market will falter--a result foreshadowed in the past few weeks.
         o Corporate financial statements will become less accurate, not more.
         o Corporations will get less not more capable CEOs.
         o More corporations will move overseas.
      Why such terrible results? Tracinski's answer: "You cannot strengthen America's corporations by making war on the people who run them."

Robert W. Tracinski was a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute between 1997 and 2004.