Quote:
Originally Posted by ADL Colin
Financial firms only had to start valuing these products at mark-to-market in November of last year. What ugly timing. What good is mark-to-market when the market ceases to exist? I don't think that was thought through. Mark-to-market is fine when there is a deep liquid market. When the only market is bankruptcy sales then everyone gets screwed.
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Yeah but what's fair is fair. They were using mark to market to write up the value of assets in the good times and make their stock prices jump and cash in on bonuses.
They also used the mark to market rules to get tax advantages on stock options.
So they also need to take it in the ass with the mark to market rules in bad times.
Changing accounting rules in the middle of a crisis would just make things worse....they may review things afterwards though and come up with a new procedure.