It seems SOX might only apply to bigger companies. No time to explore more right now, but maybe this is where the Too Big to Fail question gets answered. Let's have the big ones do all the paperwork.
The mess would probably come when the smaller ones get bought up. At times, it might not be an acquisition but a siege of procedures.
Two business worlds are to be born: the responsible and the not. Maybe it is better just to extend the term Privately Held Company to smaller public companies. It will have the same effect of allowing no questions or liabilities on the financial statements. Extending the term "Privately Held" would be better than making the statement "public and reputably audited financial information" dubious.
