Ever since the Enron Corp. scandal broke last fall, Securities & Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey L. Pitt has insisted that the SEC can clean up Corporate America all by itself. Whether it's based on confidence in his agency or on the Bush White House's desire to contain any political fallout from the scandal, Rtt's strategy has been to work around, rather than with, Congress on badly needed reforms. But the June 20 unveiling of his proposal for a new accounting-discipline board shows that Pitt has hit the limits of that approach. To give the new board teeth, Pitt is proposing a jury-rigged scheme that's likely to collapse the first time it is challenged in court. Instead, Pitt should seize the momentum that's building with the Senate Banking Committee's June 18 passage of an accounting-reform bill and work with Congress to establish the sound accounting regulator that investors need to restore confidence in Corporate America's books.
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