TheBookkeeper

Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Citadel: Earnings Troubles All Around

You said:
"Tighten, don't loosen, accounting rules for financial institutions,"

Surely you know, sir, that the rules that accounting must follow are the 650 year old double-entry book-keeping framework of rules, no? If banks had been accounting to those rules the nation would not be where it is today.

"making them mark-to-market financial asset portfolios that specifically cannot be held on a long-term basis. Also clarify rules around consolidation of off-balance sheet vehicles,"

There is no legal 'off balance sheet vehicle.' A book-keeper's job is to administer contracts with transparency to all entities that are parties to the contract, and that surely includes stockholders. If a vehicle is placed off the balance sheet then any obligations an entity has to that vehicle's contract belongs on the entity's balance sheet. This is book-keeping 101, which is to identify an entity's boundaries of contractual obligations. aka "rights to ownership."

"forcing all but the most clearly dissociated entities to be recorded as on-balance sheet obligations."

There is no "all but." There is either a contractual obligation or there is not an obligation. All else is fudged books. Banks are failing because they are not doing their bookkeeping. An accountant is not a bookkeeper. Accounting and bookkeeping interests are as different as the baseball pitcher and the umpire who is calling balls and strikes.

Can Capitalism Survive Its Latest Entanglement With Socialism?

Does an economist know how double-entry bookkeeping works? It is today's problem, but I never hear it mentioned. Why? A credit default swap would never post in a proper double entry framework of rules.. It is an illegal entry because it commingles rights to ownership. Why is this never talked about?

How to Spend $700B and Actually Solve the Problem

This makes sense, and it approaches the solution used in the Great Depression, when commercial banks were formed. They could only lend county-wide. Banks became a service the citizenry that were restricted from gambling with the citizen's money that was on deposit..

Corporate Fraud + Government Intervention = Bailout Nation

A good, unbiased commentary, for sure.
However, the story misses one important point. The 650 year old double entry bookkeeping framework of rules has never made it into software code. Our present monetary system has no control language with which we can reconstruct its misuse. Without a proper framework of rules, that monetary system resembles the national museum in Baghdad in 2003. When no one is there to guard the treasure the attitude becomes, "If we don't steal it someone else will."
Nobody will be convicted for these frauds because reconstruction the history of facts is impossible using today's financial data management systems. A proper bookkeeping is designed to record a reusable history. It's called "the audit trail." With an audit trail we could go back and reconstruct the facts in detail. Had we had that for the past 30 years, the problem, of course, would never have occurred because most of us only break the law when we are quite certain there is no accountable way to get caught.
The problem is worse today than it was yesterday, and it will be worse tomorrow. The pattern of decay will continue until we decide as a citizenry that an accounting audit trail, that had served commercial trade for 620 years, would make a good idea to return to as soon as we possibly can.

Short Sales: SEC Turns Back the Clock to 1931

However you slice it a naked short bet that pays off is somehow collecting counterfeited money. And if the short bet loses money, who gets that profit? The broker? There is no way that such practices could be being posted to a proper double entry bookkeeping framework of rules.