Got rid of this when we were smart enough to figure out it was a lie and didn't work, well right back at it..
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In the height of the financial crisis, the Financial Accounting Standards Board were pressured to pass FASB 157 (“Fair-value accounting”).
Banks were complaining that some of their holdings were difficult to value, thinly traded, tough to mark. So 157 passes and it allows the accountants at banks to mark these to a model rather than the last trade.
Derided as “Mark-to-Make-Believe” it leads to this unfortunate situation: The same models that led to the unfortunate money-losing purchase decision in the first place are now being used to actually value these holdings. regardless of the obvious flaw in the model in the first place.
As these bad buys plummet in price, investors in banks have no insight into the loss potential — they are hidden from view, along with the true financial condition of the company. This sort of accounting $uckery would never be tolerated in a nation where investors mattered more than insiders and bankers. Instead, it rewards the incompetent and allows near insolvent banks to pretend they are solvent, thereby allowing the granting of huge bonuses.
Almost three years later, we see the results of the Accounting Board’s move. The large bailed out banks remain weakened. Like all wounded animals, they are very dangerous. They have institutionalized fraud, made forgery a business expense. ZIRP exists for the primary reason of allowing these banks to rehabilitate their faulty balance sheets. Savers get punished.
The same could have been accomplished much more quickly and cheaply through prepackaged
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/fasb-sells-out-unsurprising-results-follow/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+%28The+Big+Picture%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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