The Big Picture has gone on the road to Washington, D.C., to attend the XBRL International annual conference. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox is scheduled to speak this morning, and rumor is he might unveil the SEC’s final rule for mandating XBRL use in financial reporting. I suspect that’s not true, since the credit crisis has left the Commission scrambling to tend to other matters. But we’ll be blogging later today or tomorrow to give you all the latest.

Incidentally, if any Compliance Week readers are attending the conference and want to meet, please shoot me an e-mail at mkelly@complianceweek.com.

UPDATE: The SEC has not proposed a final rule to mandate XBRL in financial reports. Those of you holding your breath until XBRL technology arrives, please resume respiration.

A clue emerged this morning, when conference organizers announced that Cox had been scratched from the schedule. To be fair, the chairman does have more pressing items on his schedule these days—but the practical upshot for us is that no final rule is here, and we have no idea when one will arrive.

David Blaszkowsky, Cox’s chief henchman on all matters XBRL, did address the audience today. He gave the usual boilerplate we’ve heard at XBRL conferences for several years about the wonders of the technology … and then dodged the question of exactly when the Commission will unveil a final rule. His only hint: “very soon.”

That sort of statement requires an <obscure> tag, if I understand my XBRL taxonomy correctly. I’m off to bug the vendors for some free pens.