When is Disclosure not Disclosure?

by Gregg A. Castano, President, Business Wire

Gregg Castano, President, Business Wire

 

Forget about level playing fields, Regulation FD, interpretive guidance and recognized disclosure channels. What about good, old-fashioned EFFECTIVENESS?

Have we entered a bizarro world in which simultaneously making material information available to millions of investors via every conceivable communications method known to modern man has somehow become LESS effective than posting that same information to one, lonely site on the Internet and hoping that whomever wants access to it will come a lookin’?

If that’s the case, then the sky isn’t really blue, death and taxes aren’t sure things and 15 minutes can’t save you 15% on your car insurance.

Why would it be considered MORE effective, or even sane for that matter, to force every investor, private or professional, to have to frantically hop from web site to web site to web site ad infinitum on any given earnings reporting day to gain access to news that is already fully aggregated and uniformly available in real-time to them at no charge in any number ways, including the mobile phones in their pockets?

Is this some kind of plot against investors by corporate mad scientists, or maybe a sick prank being played upon the investment public by the angry and vengeful ghost of Kenneth Lay? Did Foolish suddenly become the New Wise?

Why wouldn’t the SEC, an organization that should be leaping at every opportunity to undo the damage to its credibility caused under previous Chairman Rufus T. Firefly . . . I mean Christopher Cox, step in and put an end to this electronic game of “Where’s Waldo?”.

Questions, questions. The answers to which seem simple enough that my seven year old twins can easily grasp them. But I guess the obvious has turned into the obscure and the direct into the circuitous. The only thing left for me to do is go home and tell my twins that Daddy was wrong; two plus two actually equals five.