Conspiracy Theory #45jh7: FASB

Here’s their mission statement:

Serving the investing public through transparency resulting from high-quality financial reporting standards, developed in an independent, private-sector, open due process.

Here’s one task of staff under the ‘Career’s’ Section:

Lead and manage projects by focusing on key issues, reaching out to constituents, and considering alternative views.

Here’s the action (Bloomberg):

The Financial Accounting Standards Board postponed a measure, opposed by Citigroup Inc. and the securities industry, forcing banks to bring off-balance-sheet assets such as mortgages and credit-card receivables back onto their books.

Here’s the Conspiracy Theory, scratch that, here is what is going on:

If the banks were forced to make their books ‘transparent’, that $1 trillion figure would probably triple, causing bank failures, possibly a meltdown, as there are $11 trillion in off-balance-sheet assets. The problem is that you can put frosting on a piece of dog crap, but it is still a piece of dog crap.

Bankers are misleading the public as they continue to pay themselves dividends and paychecks. The FASB is allowing them to get away with what very well may be criminal behavior. The FASB is in on it, in my opinion. As is the SEC. The SEC consists of five people appointed by the President.

The FASB Board is made up of former accounting and banking types, who we are told are independent. The SEC has the authority to direct the banks to put everything on the balance sheets under the Security and Exchanges Act, but ‘defers’ to the FASB, which was created in 1973.

Smells really, really bad. Even with the frosting.