GlobalTrekker

Global Capital Asset Death Spiral

I'd have to strongly disagree, and I see this directly in our business every day. Overruling FASB is like blaming the tighter regulations for accounts reporting after Enron. Wall Streeters are always blaming the messenger. This crisis started largely because of three things: unnaturally cheap credit; insufficient moral hazard; and banks and other investment firms being able to hide their illiquid, usually artificially valued manufactured investment vehicles in ways that let them virtually make up the vehicles' valuations. Now you want to give access to the hen-house back to the fox. That's ridiculous. SIVs and other artificial constructions were created *specifically* to hide from the mark to market rules (among other related reasons). You really don't get it. And those who don't are doomed to repeat the same follies. We don't have to worry about China's and Russia's rising economic might because we do it to ourselves. "Mark to market nonsense," jeez, you create a non-straightforward security to get around all kinds of reporting and tax regulations such that no one can find it or understand it, and then you whine like little children when someone in charge demands that you price it via the market. So typical: everything is solved by the markets, except when it's inconvenient. You want capital markets to form price-creation except when you don't like the results. What hypocrisy.