Friday, April 25, 2014
Gaming The System
There ought to be public shaming of executives who game the system to look better. Consider this example. Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) was developed to help investors better compare companies. It is a step toward greater transparency. But executives have found ways around it so they can't be measured against peers. There isn't much of an excuse for this. It's bad investor relations, and it is obvious to anyone who looks at what the companies are doing. Rather then force compliance to XBRL, the move now is to get rid of it for small companies who find it a burden to tag their numbers in the 10-K. Executives can talk all they want about their concern for investors and consumers but when something as basic as this becomes a way to obfuscate performance, their actions speak louder than words.
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