FAS 133 is so deeply flawed that it should be scrapped altogether and re-thought from scratch.

The consensus is that it is time at a minimum for major revisions, if not for Financial Accounting Standard 133 to be scrapped altogether and replaced.

Talks begin tomorrow between the P5 + 1 (the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) and Iran. Today, the P5+1 group is having a prep meeting. Talks with Iran are destined to fail, not because I want them to, but because every piece is in place for failure:

Talks aimed at resolving the Iranian nuclear weapons threat will again resume this Friday. In Seoul late last month, the President reminded Iran that it must act with “‘urgency.” “There is time to solve this diplomatically,” Obama enthused. “It is always my preference to solve these issues diplomatically. But time is short.”

Freddie Mac's new accounting methods are misleading, not stricter.

Although the Roussely Report is exemplary in many respects, it has one fundamental weakness: its assumption that, when multiple French nuclear corporations express interest in the same contract, they should join together for a shared bid.

Bank of America is the latest victim of the conceptual incoherence and labyrinthine demands of FAS 133, the U.S. accounting standard for derivatives.

The Shadow Committee believes that despite the shortcomings ofFAS 157 (Fair Value Measurements), simply suspending the accounting rulewould be a mistake. Instead, the Committee recommends that the SEC and banking agencies make a concerted effort to require more detailed information about the holdings of specific financial assets as well as the methods by which the assets are valued.