"This is the same treatment the financial press gives to what I call “government sanctioned accounting fraud” that the banks use to value underwater assets on their books such as real estate and mortgage-backed securities. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) changed the rules in 2009, and the banks can value these assets at whatever they think they will be worth at some fictional date in the future. Instead of “mark to market” accounting where assets are valued at what they will sell for today (this is how the IRS does it), you have “mark to fantasy” accounting where you value the assets at what you hope to get for them in the future. This is an insolvency problem so big that FASB had to change the accounting rules to make people think some banks are still solvent." Greg Hunter http://usawatchdog.com/the-ignorance-is-willful/