Bear Mountain Bull

I saw reference to this subject a couple of times over the weekend, and Barry picked it up at The Big Picture this morning:

Here’s a honey of an idea that almost slipped by unnoticed last week. Thankfully, the NYT’s sharp eyed business columnist, Floyd Norris, caught it.

An SEC opinion letter advising companies how to deal with their Level 3 assets made a rather curious suggestion. They advised that if the prices of mark-to-model crappy paper are underwater, well then, declare it the result of forced  liquidation — and then you can simply ignore them.

It truly boggles the mind.

Would someone please explain to me how providing an official mechanism for allowing companies to ignore market values of the bad investments they made help investors? Instead of working towards transparency, the SEC is providing a mechanism to allow banks to hide losses from their shareholders. This is nothing short of an invitation to commit fraud.   

Here’s the offending passage:

“Under SFAS 157, it is appropriate for you to consider actual market prices, or observable inputs, even when the market is less liquid than historical market volumes, unless those prices are the result of a forced liquidation or distress sale. Only when actual market prices, or relevant observable inputs, are not available is it appropriate for you to use unobservable inputs which reflect your assumptions of what market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability.” (emphasis added)

Norris suggests this is an invitation for banks having two sets of books. One for Bank disclosures for shareholders: Ignore these paper losses, the prices are only due to a forced liquidation — and another for Margin calls: Hey! You are underwater by XX% in this; send in more money! Apparently, the SEC believes prices are irrelevant, except when it comes to margin calls.

While we’re abolishing the Fed, we might want to take some dynamite to the SEC and start from scratch over there too.