This week's Securities and Exchange Commission-Public Company Accounting Oversight Board roundtable on Sarbanes-Oxley was really shown up for what it really was intended to be.

Let's not kid ourselves. This was a political exercise aimed at taking the heat off the regulators. A cheap political stunt designed to keep the critics quiet. No more, no less.

According to this report, Cox later told journalists that the SEC and PCAOB hoped to release public statements on the issue in the next few weeks.

But if you read this summary of proceedings provided by Christine DiFabio, director, technical activities for Financial Executives International , it comes across as a controlled, ho-hum affair . Read it carefully. You can't expect too much change coming of that.

Kevin Kelleher sums it up beautifully in his piece Sarbanes Roundtable: Sound and Fury for TheStreet.com:

"The stage was set for an outpouring of passion, bent on driving the debate to a clear resolution. Then the accountants showed up. In fact, with a notable exception or two, even the securities attorneys, company executives and big investors all acted like accountants. They wore drab suits. They had unglamorous haircuts. You could imagine them puttering to the roundtable in their Volvos.
"More to the point, their comments during eight tedious hours of discussion were cautious and dry to the point of feckless. Alex Davern, the CFO of National Instruments (NATI:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) and a representative of the American Electronics Association, was one of the few to dare to be forthright. "I've been quite disappointed with the tenor of discussions today," he said once he got the floor.
"There's been a lot of polite discussion, and we've been patting ourselves on the back that in year two things got a bit better," Davern added."

Don't forget that Cox has already sent out the signal last month that there'll be no exemptions.

Which is what makes Larry Ribstein's response in his Ideoblog so interesting. Ribstein alerts us to moves by lawmakers, frustrated with the SEC moving on the crisis at snail's pace, to introduce the Competitive and Open Markets Protecting and Enhancing Treatment of Entrepreneurs (Compete) Act which would put in place processes for companies wishing to opt out of Section 404.

This indicates the problem is not going to go away. As for the roundtable, it was just a bone the regulators provided to stop the dogs barking.