Thursday, April 02, 2009

FASB Suspends Mark-to-market Accounting Rules

And the market loves it! The Dow is up 270 points as I write this. (Here's a link to a WSJ article on this development.)

Well, we should have known that with the steady drumbeat of analysis (examples here, here, and here) blaming the financial crisis on mark-to-market accounting that this would eventually happen.

Unbelievable. It is absolutely absurd to blame the financial crisis on mark-to-market accounting. What causes banks to suddenly realize that they have solvency problems is that they are insolvent every single day of every year; it's only that a dip in asset prices causes them to worry about it for the first time. Modern banks run on the fractional reserve system. During a credit boom, market competition pushes banks to decrease their reserve ratios, for this is key to higher profits. The Fed tends to look the other way as banks move assets around to avoid mandatory reserve requirements (either 10% or 3% depending on the size of the bank.) According to Fed data, aggregate bank reserves fell to 0.74% of bank deposits, showing that banks are adept at getting around mandated reserve ratios. (Reserves have exploded since the fall of 2008, showing the fear that has struck the banks.)

Allowing corporations more flexibility to value their assets (i.e. facilitating wishful thinking or outright deception) will not make this crisis go away, it will prolong it. The crisis will be over when markets clear. That requires accurate information, not opacity.

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