Outpouring of Opposition:  In a blog at The Huffington Post (“Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowd(Funding),” March 6, 2012), CFA Director of Investor Protection Barbara Roper documents the broad opposition to the supposedly non-controversial JOBS Act.  She points to letters from investor advocates and unions, testimony by leading securities law experts, and statements by state securities regulators to show that the measures in the JOBS Act “are ‘non-controversial’ in precisely the same way that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was non-controversial when it sailed through the Senate on a 90-8 vote and the House on a 362-57 vote: They have strong support from a business community chafing at what they see as outdated regulations and from political leaders of both parties intent on ignoring warnings that the regulations being rolled back were adopted for a purpose that is still relevant today.” Warning that the bill, as adopted in the House, “would undermine market transparency, roll back important investor protections, and, if investors behave rationally, drive up the cost of capital for the small companies it purports to benefit,” Roper called on the Senate to adopt a more thoughtful and balanced approach “that narrowly targets legitimate barriers to capital formation without taking a hatchet to vital investor protections.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-roper/jobs-bill_b_1314131.html