SEC as a parrot

EVERY so often, organisations become bywords for something else. Apple means elegance, Berkshire Hathaway loyalty and BlackBerry decline. Alas, FIFA, the governing body of world football, spells corruption. Sprucing up this most tarnished of brands will take more than a bit of tinkering with the way FIFA is run.On February 26th FIFA’s member associations will hold a secret ballot—what else?—in Zurich to choose a new president who will replace Sepp Blatter. The omens are not good. Mr Blatter bequeathed his successor an organisation in crisis. His fifth term was cut short after the indictment last year of several of the game’s biggest-wigs for alleged money-laundering. He has since been suspended from football for eight years for making an undocumented SFr2m ($2.1m) payment to Michel Platini, then head of Europe’s football body. (Mr Platini, once a favourite to succeed Mr Blatter, has also been suspended from the game; both men deny wrongdoing.)