Journal: Please fire all the accountants. . .

If there is a lesson to be learned from this economic disaster, surely it is that putting middle men between financial data and the market is an antiquidated tradition that no longer serves the best interests of the public.

Before IT existed, accounting was the best way to get the most accurate information that could economically be produced and disseminated at the time out to the market. To do this, you needed mediators that could be trusted to summarize the data in a way consistent with an industry wide standard. It was not perfect and was subject to manipulation, but it was the best method possible at the time.

Here we are now in the 21st century, and no longer do we need to fit information on paper. Additionally, the market is far more complex now, and only being able to view information under a certain set of assumptions is no longer sufficient. It's time to start drinking from the firehose. I don't want someone else's fair value calculation, doubtful account reserve, or even cost capitalizations. Give me a feed to your raw daily transactions in an open standard like XBRL. I, along with other interested parties, will decide for ourselves whether or not your organization is making a profit or is even solvent.

It is time to get rid of the middlemen and replace them with direct access to the information. The technology is ripe and the data format standards are ready and able.