Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 to control the kind of corporate abuses that were rampant during the final throes of the Dotcom era. It made provisions to enforce greater CEO accountability in financial reporting, bar loans to company officers, disclose all CEO and CFO compensation, prohibit insider trading, submit corporate financial practices to closer auditing, and impose stiffer penalties on financial reporting fraud and all other violations of federal securities laws. Despite this, loopholes remain in the system and corporate abuse continues to flourish. According to journalist Michael Kinsley, the scandal lies not in what's done that's illegal, but in what's done that is legal.

"Lay and Skilling Aren't The Only Guilty Ones" from Slate
"Sarbanes-Oxley Act" from Wikipedia
New source of info on executive compensation outrages at www.footnoted.org