March 23, 2012
Senate Passes JOBS Act With “Registration of Crowdfunding Organizers” Amendment
Yesterday, the Senate passed the JOBS Act by a 73-26 vote with an amendment that would require web organizers of crowdfunding to register with the SEC. All other provisions of the original House version of the JOBS Act – that Dave blogged about a few weeks ago and as covered by the memos posted in our “JOBS Act” Practice Area – were all approved by the Senate without amendment. As noted in this NY Times article, “Because the Senate made several amendments to the House bill, the package will be sent back to the House to work out differences. House Republican leaders said Thursday that they expected to take up the amended bill next week and hoped to send it quickly to President Obama, who has said he will sign it.”
So it’s a done deal and I will stop my complaining about it. I know folks that work with start-ups and emerging companies are excited and deservedly so. But Congress in its haste has done some pretty awful things in this bill that we will learn about all too well in the days ahead. Hang on for a wild ride. Plenty of memos to be posted and webcasts to come…
Insider Trading: Senate Passes Watered Down STOCK Act
As noted in this NY Times article, the Senate yesterday finally passed the STOCK Act by a vote of 96-3 – accepting the changes that the House passed last month (ie. proposed regulation of “political intelligence” firms was scrapped). The article notes “The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said Republicans had blocked efforts to go to a conference to negotiate differences with the House.” And this excerpt says it all: “The bill is meant to eliminate ambiguity, though lawyers said prosecutions would still be difficult.” I’ll fall out of my chair if this law is ever enforced…
Goldman Sachs Scans Internal Emails for the Term ‘Muppet’
And just so I’m not a downer altogether in my blogging today, I bring you this funny piece from the Huffington Post entitled “Goldman Sachs Scans Internal Emails For The Word ‘Muppet‘…and this video is simply wonderful…
– Broc Romanek