XBRL, like it or not, is coming. The SEC hasn't wavered in its transition plan; about 500 large public companies will starting reporting in the new format this summer. Another 500 will follow suit next year, and others will follow. As for banking, more than 8,000 institutions already use the format when reporting to the FDIC, so it should come as no surprise that some feel the tagging technology could be used to track TARP funds.

This raises some interesting points about how one-off reporting issues might be dealt with in the future. Certainly, it would be nice from a market point of view, to have all TARP banks report similarly when it comes to the uses of funds. But how to enforce the proper tagging structure? We might see the rise of independent organizations to set standards or we might see the SEC get involved in telling banks or other industries how certain issue must be handled. You certainly want to be able to aggregate information across all reporting companies.