Jack Ciesielski has a new report out that puts banks' arguments against fair value squarely in their place. And the analysis alone should make short shrift of the industry's complaints, though it no doubt will do nothing of the sort.

The accounting expert and investment adviser who runs The Analyst's Accounting Observer finds that banks account for 96 percent of all the asset markdowns to the balance sheets of the S&P 500 that he estimates would result from enactment of the Financial Accounting Standard Board's latest proposal.

I see that FASB is sticking to its schedule for ending most off-balance-sheet treatment for leases, and so is the IASB. It's about time, frankly, if only to spare us poor, I mean, intrepid financial journalists from having to sort through the particulars of the current accounting treatment a moment longer than necessary.

I speak from personal experience here, having wrestled with the false distinction between capital and operating leases for a sidebar to a piece I wrote for CFO Magazine way back when. The article delved into the details of a particularly complex variation that companies were using to finance real estate, called synthetic leases.

I have to disagree with my colleague Steve Taub on this, not because my heart bleeds for jobless, underwater homeowners, but to keep foreclosures from driving home prices ever downward.

Here's the thing: What is the "natural" price that Steve wants the market to find?

 Submitted by Caleb Newquist, republished from Going Concern, Accounting News for Accountants and CFOs.

 Just last week we mentioned the American Bankers Association and its efforts to undermine the FASB's latest fair value proposal that, in the ABA's mind, could bring down civilization as we know it.

Submitted by Caleb Newquist, republished from Going Concern, Accounting News for Accountants and CFOs.

Banks hate the FASB. This is understood. They're especially bent out of shape these days because the Board recently put out its latest fair value proposal that requires them to carry their loans at fair value. Bob Herz knew that this was going to cause hella-belly aching although he may not have predicted the virtual assault that was coming.

The latest revelations  concerning the dispute between AIG and Goldman over collateral show how weak the new financial reform package really is.

After all, Goldman's demands for collateral from AIG as it was failing ended up costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Yet according to the testimony today during the crisis panel's latest hearings, the whole question hinged on what constituted fair value.

We're not quite as sure as others are that yesterday's Supreme Court decision regarding SarbOx is so utterly meaningless regarding the future of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

Sure, the court said the law is still fully in effect, blah, blah, blah.

Submitted by Caleb Newquist, republished from Going Concern, Accounting News for Accountants and CFOs.

Earlier in the week we heard the devastating news that the FASB and IASB's convergence efforts, despite a good hustle, would not meet the G20's deadline of June 2011.

When it comes to convergence of accounting standards between the US and the rest of the world, it's often one step forward, two steps back.

Last week, as part of global convergence, the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board released a joint proposal to change accounting and reporting of financial instruments and the statement of comprehensive income. It was the first of a series of joint proposals to come from the two boards by the third quarter of 2010, representing an important push toward global accounting convergence.

The International Accounting Standards Board is attempting to change its rule related to accounting for financial liabilities to avoid counter-intuitive results from changes in the credit risk of corporate liabilities.

When a company chooses to value its own debt instruments at fair value, the deterioration of its own credit standing, and therefore the value of its debt, causes gains to be recorded on the income statement. The vast majority of companies that use this rule are banks and the rule exists also in US GAAP.