Mark to Market

In the coming days you might hear about something called "Mark to Market" accounting. This is something that came out of Enron inspired reforms. Companies like Enron would buy an asset, say for $10 billion dollars, then if the asset lost value and became worth, say, only $4 billion dollars, the company would not put the new low value on the books. So, companies like Enron could claim to be worth more than they actually were. Mark to Market was a rule that companies had to relist any assets at their market price if they went down in value. Well, if you are a bank and you suddenly have subprime mortgages that are worth next to nothing, the value of your assets shrinks dramatically and you have to list that on the books, regardless of the fact that you have no intention of selling the mortgages until they recover some value.

A lot of people, particularly from the right of the political spectrum are pushing for this to be modified and you might hear about it in the coming days. Simsisms urges you to do your own research and form your own opinion as to whether this is a good idea or not. Wikipedia has an article on the subject, which can be viewed here.

Many of you know that I love Dave Ramsey, in spite of his many attempts to put me out of business. He is putting forth a solution to the financial crisis that has some interesting ideas. I do not endorse or condemn it; I merely find it interesting. Again, I urge people to do their own research and draw their own conclusions. His plan may be found here.

If that plan appeals to you, there are instructions on daveramsey.com on how you can send that proposal to your congressperson. However, I think it is pretty clear from the past 2 years that your congress person hates you and would probably love nothing more than to poke safety pins into your eye sockets just to try and cause you a little more pain. I'd like to take this time to remind you that you should vote against any incumbent in the fall congressional election as NONE of them, republican or democrat, particularly deserves your vote. If you scored a 10% approval rating on your last performance evaluation, you'd lose your job. They should too.

By the way, the congressional website was apparently so inundated with visitors that it crashed earlier today. It would appear that people have a lot to say about the bailout.

In the "what the (expletive) were they thinking" category, it's suddenly come to light that the moderator of the upcoming VP debates has a decidedly Pro-Obama book coming out in January. This apparently struck no one in the debate organizing world as a conflict of interest. If it strikes YOU as a conflict of interest and you would like to tell the people in charge of the debates, you may do so at (202)-872-1020. Feel free to ring them up and call shenanigans on this.

That's the rundown on the latest. More as things develop.