The Securities and Exchange Commission is acting like a well-meaning, but hopelessly awkward grandmother who just discovered the Internet — yet has no clue how to end IM conversations with her grandkids. No matter how hard she tries, she's never going to truly "get it."
Similarly, the SEC remains behind the technology curve no matter how much chairman Christopher Cox attempts to prove the regulator has joined the 21st century. At a press conference to unveil IDEA — the new version of EDGAR — Cox sat in a swivel chair, sans blazer, fielding questions both from reporters sitting in front of him and webcast viewers sending him emails — and reading BlackBerry messages from staffers. He bragged about how modern the SEC has become — perhaps in the hopes that companies will finally rally behind his push for XBRL before it's mandated.
The 1980s style commercial for the new filing system didn't help his cause. And neither does the SEC's use of Twitter, the site built for sharing your minute-by-minute activities with people who must not have full-time jobs. Kristi Kaepplein, who heads the investor education office, said Twitter is the first of many SEC forays into social networking to better understand investors' needs.
But does any investor truly need an SEC staffer to give 12 Twitter updates in one hour, such as "Cox is giving live demonstration"? (Then again, as of this writing, the site was last updated on Tuesday. Does that mean the SEC hasn't done anything at all since then?)
While I'm not necessarily agreeing with everything this columnist says, he does bring up a good point about Cox's legacy, particularly with respect to the burns the SEC's reputation suffered from the Bear Stearns mess: "It is a shame that the crowning achievement of Cox's tenure will be a new web site rather than better substantive investor reporting."
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