Neutered Watchdog Dreams of Its Missing Parts: Jonathan Weil

Now that the Supreme Court has said the auditing profession’s main regulator can continue to exist, here’s a knottier question: Should it?

The case for preserving the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in its current form just got much weaker. This week the court ruled that, for the board’s structure to be constitutional, the Securities and Exchange Commission must be able to fire its members at will. Previously, under the statute that created the board, the SEC could remove them only for good cause once it had appointed them to their five-year terms.