Mark-To-Market

Today, the FASB announced a change in accounting regulations that will allow banks to value their "toxic" assets by an "orderly" transaction policy, basically trying to mitigate the effects of excessive write-downs caused by inactive markets. In the short term, this should be very positive for the market as the change came in time to hit Q1 earnings. Longterm, however, it reduces the clearity of valuing the assets which many believe may prolong the process of delevering that has already occurred for the past year.


A summary of the changes can be found here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUKTRE5314PX20090402