单项选择题

Accounting has become political. Fair-value rules, which require assets to be marked to market prices, are blamed by some for exaggerating banks’ losses. Although it will take years to establish whether banks’ accounts have painted too bleak a picture, the rows are already in full swing. Confidence in "efficient" market prices has been hammered, as has the principle that accounts are designed mainly for investors.
The Intemational Accounting Standards Board (IASB), which sets rules for most countries apart from America, has made tactical concessions to avoid the nightmare scenario of banks and politicians writing the rules themselves. On November 12th it issued new rules for financial assets that will be optional from this year and mandatory from 2013.
Loans, or securities similar to loans, will be held at the price banks paid for them, provided the bit of the firm that owns them is not engaged in trading. Everything else will be held at fair value. Most observers, including the IASB, reckon this will cut the proportion of assets held at fair value. Critically, for those who believe most firms try to warm up, if not fully cook, their books, the notes to the accounts will disclose all assets at fair value.
The IASB also proposes a rearrangement of how bad debts are recognized. Instead of booking losses as things go sour, they will be spread over the life of a loan, although the draft rules do not go as far as Spain’s system of "generic provisions" which leads to more reserves being built up in good times than in bad, smooth- ing profits even more. The IASB also wants to end the practice of banks marking the price of their own debt to market, though details are not agreed.
The IASB has made big concessions. Yet it is the European Commission (EC) which decides if the European Union adopts the standard-setter’s new rules. The G20 has called for independent, global standards, that "reaffirm... the framework of fair value", but a few countries, notably France, are hostile. In a letter to Sir David Tweedie, the IASB’s chairman, the commission said the rules "may not yet have struck the fight balance". The IASB will probably plough on and hope the commission backs down.
The IASB’s position has been weakened by differences with the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which sets rules in America and which wants to merge eventually with the IASB. The FASB has yet to produce proposals on financial assets and is more wedded to a fair-value regime. It also faces a proposal in Congress that could allow America’s new systemic-risk regulator to suspend the rules. Strength comes from unity--without it, accounting risks becoming just another tool for governments to attempt to manage the economic cycle.
The statement "the rows are already in full swing" (Line 3, Par