Wackonomics

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

I'm not sure that the "mark to market" rules are correct in the goal of fairly valuing assets....

Jeffrey Skilling would certainly agree.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by alexamenos

Jeffrey Skilling would certainly agree.

ironic you would bring up skilling, the application of mark-to-market was pivotal in enron's ability to inflate their asset values, in that case m2m worked to increase asset values to unrealistic figures. enron would not have been such a train wreck if m2m wasn't applied

the pivotal question is if assest values should refect a value on a single day and time, or a more accurate longer term view.

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

ironic you would bring up skilling, the application of mark-to-market was pivotal in enron's ability to inflate their asset values, in that case m2m worked to increase asset values to unrealistic figures. enron would not have been such a train wreck if m2m wasn't applied

the pivotal question is if assest values should refect a value on a single day and time, or a more accurate longer term view.

the pivotal question is accounting, not appraisal. Lower of cost or market works fine for this. If there is no market for the asset, then that ought to tell us something about the asset's value.