Despite the today's big announcement that the Securities and Exchange Commission will finally start making companies file financial statements in XBRL format, the ugly acronym was notably absent from most of the fawning over the new technology's potential.
"Interactive data" has always been easier to swallow, and Chairman Christopher Cox has tended to use that phrase liberally when explaining his passion to lay-people. But at today's open meeting it was obvious that everyone was doing their best to avoid the X-word.
Finally, Commissioner Paul Atkins let everyone in on the SEC's new marketing strategy. "I'm happy that this is being discussed in plain English," he said, most likely referring to Cox's plainspoken initiative — and the sparseness of XBRL references.
Atkins not-so-fondly recalled how XBRL once was an even more filling alphabet stew. In an earlier era it was known as XFRML , or Extensible Financial Reporting Markup Language.
"We've come a long way," Atkins said.
Perhaps now that XBRL, er, interactive data, looks to be going mainstream, the SEC will re-brand it again. "ID" should be easy enough.
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