FT, though fearlessly blaming accountants, seems to sheepishly favor bank regulators.

Sir you write: “Unscrupulous managers, increasingly rewarded with equity incentives linked to accounting measures, have exploited the system. By writing up asset values in line with market values — whether real or estimated — they could book profits, distribute dividends, boost share prices and make incentive payments. Consider investment bankers’ bonuses, distributed ahead of the 2008 financial crisis but based on asset values that tumbled only months later.” “Reform accounting rules to restore trust in audit” August 3.

I agree, quite often accounting is a tool used for not quite ethical behavior. But, when you refer to the investment bankers’ bonuses, you are sure pointing in the wrong direction.

I dare you dare to go back and look at how these investment (and European) banks, before the 2008 crisis, were leveraged with assets perceived (mortgages), decreed (sovereigns) or concocted (AAA rated securities) as safe. Do you think that if they had been required to hold as much capital against these assets, as they needed to hold against assets perceived as “risky”, like loans to entrepreneurs, there would have been room available for all those bonuses? No way Jose!

And you do seem to suggest somehow that the accountants, before that crisis, should have considered the possibility of asset values tumbling only months later. Sir, the explosion, and its real causes, is much more important than the how it is accounted. If accounting is to become even more predictive then we are surely feeding even more worms into that open can of undue behavior.

When we have regulators who believe that what is perceived as risky is more dangerous to our bank systems than what is perceived as safe, I assure you that much more important than reforming any accounting rules, is reforming bank regulation rules. 

Sir, whenever, for whatever great sounding reason, it is argued that banks should not be required to hold more capital, you can be sure there are some neo-bankers thinking about their bonuses behind it.

PS. Neo-bankers? Yes because that is not the bankers I remember. Then they were savvy loan officers, now they are just equity minimizing financial engineers. I am sorry for feeling quite nostalgic.

PS. Most of the bonuses that are currently paid out to bankers, are still firmly rooted in the low capital requirements against what is perceived, decreed or concocted as safe.

@PerKurowski