“If bar codes can track down bad peanuts on store shelves, shouldn’t we be able to use technology to track details of mortgages and other debt instruments?” Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon argues that Washington should focus less on regulatory powers and more on better transparency, which XBRL makes possible. Read the rest of this entry »
A just-released position paper issued by XBRL US organization explains exactly how trust can be restored in the mortgage-backed (MBS) securities market. The concept is simple and the technology exists: detail every loan from cradle to grave in an automated form that is easy to analyze so that investors can value the actual cash flows of these investments and untangle the good from the bad. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s exciting to see how quickly even large companies move when a potential solution is in sight and the motivation is strong. The IBM Data Governance Council is calling for the creation of an XBRL “risk taxonomy” – by year’s end – for the reporting and assessing of risk by financial firms. Read the rest of this entry »
With the financial markets under siege and experts agreeing that we are not through the tumult yet, everyone sees how critical the need is for greater transparency into business and financial information. XBRL may not be a magic pill, but it steps us closer to a cure for financial complexity and overload, says EDGAR Online’s CEO Philip Moyer. Read the rest of this entry »
Regulation is not the answer; Wikinomics is. So argues authors Bob and Don Tapscott who challenge the financial services industry to open itself for peer review and improvement by the public. Tapping the collaborative wisdom of the crowd has resulted in such remarkable achievements as Wikipedia, the public human genome project, and Linux open-source software. The masses may have more power than the experts to restore long-term confidence. Read the rest of this entry »
Leaders from the world’s 19 largest economies and the European Union met in Washington D.C. for an economic summit last month and agreed on broad principles for preventing future economic crises. Without mentioning XBRL or any other financial formats, XBRL is clearly part of the solution they envision. Read the rest of this entry »
“The entire financial ecosystem is trying to survive on inadequate data,” said Philip Moyer, President and CEO of EDGAR Online, when asked for his views this week on the credit crisis, and how EDGAR Online can help. “The credit market is frozen because we still don’t know what balance sheets to trust.” The three-part solution, says Moyer, is a combination of technology, improved Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations, and refined accounting definitions made possible by XBRL. Read the rest of this entry »
“XBRL is evolving everywhere, but unevenly, because it is driven by various stakeholders such as governments, stock exchanges, banks, and other industry sectors,” according to the AICPA’s Journal of Accountancy. The latest issue compares the US, Asia, and Europe in their progress adopting XBRL as the universal language of business reporting and puts the SEC’s proposed mandate in global perspective. Read the rest of this entry »
The SEC is replacing its decades-old EDGAR system for collecting and distributing financial data with an entirely new IDEA (Interactive Data Electronic Applications) system that takes advantage of 21st century internet technologies and will change the way investors get and use business information. So why is EDGAR Online excited about the SEC’s giving away free XBRL data? Read the rest of this entry »
Get ready for the scramble. According to Compliance Week’s recent survey, nearly 80 percent of all public companies are unprepared to file their SEC filings in XBRL, the financial reporting format the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to mandate within a few months. Read the rest of this entry »
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