Sarbanes-Oxley is more involved then just valuations. It is aimed at assuring the financial statements are accurate and there isn't three card monty going on
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Sarbanes-Oxley is the root of most of this problem. The mortgage backed bonds these investment firms own are currently unmarketable. Because of this Sarbanes-Oxley requires that they have a book value of $0. This makes the investment bank under capitalized and severly limits their ability to operate.
Problem is the bonds are not worthless - they just aren't liquid. Some of the mortagages that are used to back them have gone bad and no one wants to buy them without know exactly how many have gone bust. But they are still worth at least 90% of their face value or more. All you have to do is hold them to maturity. If they would relax or eliminate the valuation rule of Sarbanes and let the banks revalue them to a "best estimate" (like 90%) the bank crisis goes away over night.
The government bailout will mean the government buys the bonds and holds them to maturity or unbundles the mortgages and sells the good ones and liquidates the bad ones. That's why the government has no idea what the real cost to the tax payers will be in the end but it won't be 700 billion. There's even a chance the government could make money on this (if you eliminate the time value of money).
What I posted above has nothing to do with the bailout of Freddie and Fannie. That one will cost hundreds of billions in outright fraud and graft and thousands of people (lenders and borrowers alike for falsified loan documents) should be headed for prison.
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Today's Featured Article - Restoration Story: 1951 Farmall H - by The Red (John Fritz). I have been a collector of Farmall tractors since 1990 when I first obtained part of the family farm in Eastern Indiana. My current collection includes a 1938 F20, 1945 H, 1946 H, and the recently purchased 1951 H. This article will focus on what I encountered and what I did to bring the 1951 NEAR DEATH Farmall H back to life.
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