Requiring companies to expense options in the absence of any satisfactory method to evaluate their costs would be inconsistent with the principles and objectives of accounting.

Since Enron, public officials and others have urged the Financial Accounting Standards Board to require that companies place a value on the stock options they grant to employees and treat that value as an expense in computing their earnings. The FASB has responded with a commitment to impose this requirement...

Paul Atkins yesterday became the first SEC commissioner to criticize openly a proposal to require companies to treat employee stock options as current expenses.

Despite today"s many identifiable and serious risks to the global economic recovery, most markets are tradingas if the skies were blue.

Despite last month's sell-off in emerging market asset prices, these markets are still pricing the emerging markets as if they were free of the risks that have traditionally characterized them.

Current state pension accounting practices are inaccurate and outmoded; a more accurate accounting demonstrates that state pension funds are underfunded by more than six times the amount the plans report.

The author discusses the impact of options policy on publicly traded firms and the economy.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is about to change the way employee stock options are treated for accounting purposes.