{"id":1499,"date":"2009-03-05T22:39:32","date_gmt":"2009-03-06T02:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=1499"},"modified":"2009-03-05T22:43:45","modified_gmt":"2009-03-06T02:43:45","slug":"a-replacement-for-mark-to-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2009\/03\/05\/a-replacement-for-mark-to-market\/","title":{"rendered":"A Replacement For Mark-To-Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an earlier post, Musings on Mark-To-Market<\/strong><\/a>, I talked about the problems of this accounting rule in the current economic crisis.<\/p>\n

RichardH commented that valuing assets is more of an art than a science.<\/p>\n

I know this is anathema to accountants, but perhaps a company ought to be able to say, “We don’t know what our assets are worth”.\u00a0 In this environment, that is probably a truer statement than putting almost any kind of misleading number on it.<\/p>\n

Other possibilities would be to allow companies to state a range.\u00a0 They might be able to say to their creditors, “if you make me sell all my assets today they are worth $100, but if you let me sell them over time and after the economy recovers they are worth $1,000.”<\/p>\n

I remember a discussion with an ex-boss of mine who asked me to tell him how long a software-development project would take.\u00a0 He then asked me if I was 95% certain about this number. I could not honestly tell him that I was.\u00a0 After berating my poor abilities to manage a software project after my 40 years of experience, he asked me again how sure I was.\u00a0 I told him I was 95% sure.\u00a0 He then proceeded to ask me that if I was not 95% certain 5 minutes ago, how could I be so certain now?\u00a0 I told him that I was just trying to give him the answer that he wanted to hear. I guess I should have waited more than 5 minutes to change my answer.<\/p>\n

RichardH’s comment on the earlier post indicates that he has similar stories to tell from his world.<\/p>\n

I’ll have to ask my daughter, the accountant, if there is any parallel between my experience and that of the accounting world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an earlier post, Musings on Mark-To-Market, I talked about the problems of this accounting rule in the current economic crisis. RichardH commented that valuing assets is more of an art than a science. I know this is anathema to accountants, but perhaps a company ought to be able to say, “We don’t know what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1503,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions\/1503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}