Sarbanes Working on Foreign Ownership Bill

Word is that Senate Banking ranking Senator Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., is working on the new legislation to revamp the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIS. (CFIS is the federal group that reviews proposed foreign acquisitions of U.S. assets.) Sarbanes, who retires this year, is one of the most anti-business Senators in Congress, and co-author of the counterproductive Sarbanes-Oxley scheme. We need to watch this closely to make sure that security, not protectionism and more Congressional meddling in capital markets, is the real goal.