The morning discussions moved back and forth between economic interpretations, technological implementation, and banking operations.  It was clear to everyone, said Alder, “that the sharing of normalized data via common interfaces could provide regulatory authorities with new insights on systemic risk.”  In the afternoon, XBRL was the topic, and what might have happened if Lehman Brothers data had been reported in this data format: “XBRL metadata tags would have identified the relevant information to computerized analytical tools, and the financial institutions could have summarized their exact exposure at the press of a button.”

Adler chairs the IBM Data Governance Council and writes about the exciting two-day meeting in a blog post titled Smart Financial Regulation because that is what the group believes can be done, and soon. Smart Financial Regluation reguires 1) a new reporting structure (XBRL taxonomy) that precisely describes financial products and 2) new regulatory reporting rules preventing the trading of financial products unless they are defined using this new taxonomic vocabulary.

Alder says he intends to host regular meetings among principal representatives of these groups to develop the new reporting standards that enable Smart Financial Regulation. Stand by for more news soon on the Council’s progress.

“Every debt comes with a date on which payment is due,” says Atwood. “What we owe and how we pay is a feature of all human societies, and profoundly shapes our shared values and our cultures.” Atwood’s witty arguments on the topic of debt go beyond politics and economic issues, to show that cultural issues underlie all our borrowing and lending.

The book is based on five lectures Atwood gave on Canadian radio earlier this year. Those lectures are available for free at CBC Podcasting until December 19th. In January they will be sold on iTunes.

Debt, for Atwood, is not just the topic of financial professionals or CEOs and hedge fund managers. Her captivating and wide ranging intellectual musings explore financial debt as well as emotional debt, debts of honor, forgiveness, and vengeance. They range from Star Trek to Dante’s Divine Comedy to debtors’ prison, to the fury of cheated monkeys, and much, much more.

Author Alice Schroeder keeps the narrative moving through Warren’s paper routes, horse track betting, his “slave labor” at granddad’s store, and juvenile schemes of a precocious and socially awkward boy. His first doubts about religion began when, out of boredom in church one day, he started calculating the life expectancy of the song writers in the hymnals and discovered no connection between religiosity and longevity.

Along the story of his youth, his education, and his move away from Wall Street back to his beloved home town of Omaha, Nebraska, the reader gets basic lessons about how the stock market functions, the potential of a dollar, how to value companies, and the value of human relationships. (But as one Amazon.com reviewer pointed out, you can get a lot of this straight from Buffet himself by reading his letters to shareholders and other reports on www.berkshirehathaway.com.) But there is a lot of new information in this lively biography of an obsessed creature of habit, including some surprises, such as his unusual triangular domestic situation, arranged by his loving wife.

The book’s title, The Snowball, comes from the image of Warren playing in the snow with his little sister Bertie, catching snowflakes. He scoops more flakes together, packs them into a ball, places it on the ground and starts rolling. He reaches the edge of his yard, looks around, and continues onward, “casting his eye on a whole world of snow”

It starts with two groups of enforcers who have no legal authority: hockey players who elect to keep others in line, and internet vigilantes who take merciless vengeance on Nigerian scammers. In Act Two, titled “Now you SEC me, Now You Don’t”, we observe a legal enforcer, Chairman Christopher Cox of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, turning away from Congressional offers for greater official authority to act. You may want to get a box of tissues before downloading the radio program from This American Life, reported by Alex Blumberg.

Titled “The Government’s Financial Health: A Citizen’s Guide to the 2007 Financial Report of the United States Government” the downloadable report is offered as a user-friendly reference tool for understanding how tax revenue is allocated. Drafted in coordination with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Citizen’s Guide provides an overview of the U.S. government’s short-term and long-term financial outlook, highlighting the government’s biggest fiscal challenge, the unsustainable growth in entitlement programs. This is the first of what is expected to be an annual publication and is available electronically.

1. Sound interesting at a party and provoke lively debates with The Harvard Business Review’s annual survey of breakthrough ideas
2. Be able to discuss how XBRL will affect the roles of everyone in your company, from the CEO and CFO down, by reading this basic primer called Introducing Interactive Data
3. Stay in charge of the IT department by seeing how to evaluate the business case of XBRL initiatives, explained in a whitepaper titled New Format and Technology Drives Enhanced Business Reporting
4. Read what the International Federation of Accountants calls the year’s top 10 articles