Warren Buffett's Regulatory Forebearance

Ending marking to market is not the solution (it is the equivalent of ignoring a problem). This came up in class today, I totally agree. It is not perfect, but at least will keep the balance sheets somewhat accurate (ok, more accurate than they would be if we end marking to market).


Warren Buffett's Regulatory Forebearance:

"...proposals to solve this problem have focused on either attempting to have the government inflate the market value of the assets, inject new capital into the banks or obscure the accounting rules so banks can go on pretending the asset values haven't dropped. None of these will work. Buying the assets has proved impossible, the capital injections have their own problems and fiddling with the accounting rules risks making investors even more skeptical of bank balance sheets.

So what do we do? We should simply ease the capital requirements

....Yesterday Holman Jenkins pointed out that Warren Buffett supports it as well. Maybe if we start calling it the "Buffett Plan..."