"Fair-Value Accounting's "Atmosphere of Fear""

By David Katz: Senior finance executives at some of the biggest financial institutions are calling on the Financial Accounting Standards Board to reassess its new fair-value standards in light of the banks' experience in the subprime crisis.

The shift to fair-value accounting in the midst of the crisis spawned an "atmosphere of fear" that lead to a "lockdown" in the use of judgment in valuing securities, they said last week at a Standard & Poor's conference provocatively titled "Is it Time to Write Off Fair Value?"

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Source: CFO.com, 19 May 2008. © CFO Publishing Corporation 2008. All rights reserved.