This may explain why, as of last night, the bulk of those statements required first by the SEC had still not materialised. True, companies often wait until the last minute before filing their financial statements But this time, it's different. Chief executives will want to be quadruply sure they have every detail nailed down before putting their futures on the line with their signatures. The SEC can expect a torrent of filings after the closing bell today. The final deadline is 5pm.The heat, by the way, is not being felt only by those at the top. The chief executives have final responsibility, but many are doing their darndest to spread it around their companies. Department heads submitting figures are being asked to put their own names to whatever they submit.

Likewise, their underlings are similarly being made to attest to their honesty and accuracy."You can bet those certification papers are working their way up every corporation, and people are basically signing their lives away all along," noted Pat McGurn, vice president of Institutional Shareholder Services. "Believe me, every chief executive will have in his or her breast pocket a list of everybody in the company along the way who has certified to them that everything's OK."What, meanwhile, will be the impact of these new strictures, short term and long term? There is lingering concern about what we will discover when we wake up tomorrow morning. We already know a few companies, such as Qwest Communications, that are on the record as being unable to meet the deadline because of accounting errors they have already identified. The danger, however, is that scores of other chief executives will come up with little more than an "oops, look what we have discovered!". If that happens, the markets may go haywire once again.Even if all goes well and everyone were to comply on time, it's not clear what that would achieve. It seems unlikely that the markets would suddenly take flight, because in theory, the chief executives would only be confirming what investors already know. Finally, there is the view that chief executives intent on committing fraud ­ we know now all too well that the temptation to bend the figures to ensure continuing self-enrichment has been too compelling to resist for some (think WorldCom and Enron) ­ will not be deterred by this certification process.Confusion abounds, meanwhile, about some of the details of the SEC diktat.

It is not clear, for example, what it will do about companies that miss tonight's deadline The SEC has yet to say publicly how it would react. On the one hand, there may be legitimate reasons for delay, for example in cases where chief executives are new to their companies and want more time to familiarise themselves with their new homes. On the other hand, all of them know this: after tonight, if they fail to sign those oaths, they will be considered guilty by investors until they prove themselves innocent. Companies that fail to comply on time could find their stocks hammered on Thursday.The SEC is trying to put at least a moderately friendly face on the exercise. "We want to give companies the opportunity to show investors that they stand behind their numbers and that they should not be compared to the corporate bad actors who have brought so much pain to America's investors," John Nester, a spokesman for the SEC, commented. In the case of non-compliance, the SEC is likely to sue companies in the civil courts. Alternatively, the SEC might send cease-and-desist orders to chief executives who fail to sign their certifications or refer them to the US Justice Department for immediate investigation.But even leaving aside the SEC, there is the parallel demand for certifications contained in the Sarbanes-Oxley bill.

It says that all publicly listed companies must attach the documents to their round of quarterly earnings, which in many cases must also be filed by tonight. And the law is very clear about what punishments would be meted out. Any chief executive who refuses to swear that the numbers are accurate and that nothing is being hidden from investors could face up to five years in jail and $500,000 (£326,000) in fines. If they are found to have willfully lied on their declarations, however, their summer plans will be disrupted for many years to come. Then the consequences could be 10 years as a guest of the federal government and fines topping $1m.Do we really expect to see disgraced chief executives heading soon to the federal penitentiaries in busloads? Of course not. Will this exercise succeed in scraping all the grime and barnacles of greed from the underside of capitalist America? Highly unlikely..