Andrew Leonard of Salon makes a nice catch on the Journal‘s bank-lobbying story this morning, one I read right by—perhaps because the Journal buried it in the fourth-to-last paragraph.
Here’s what Leonard says about the piece:
Journal reporters Susan Pulliam and Tom McGinty deserve a lot of credit for nailing the story — it is as well documented a case of big-bucks lobbyists succeeding in getting the rules changed in favor of their clients as you will ever see.
And here’s the buried news:
Still, many saw the new rules as a watering down of standards. That triggered a backlash within FASB. At a meeting of a FASB advisory group in New York on April 28, three of its members threatened to resign in protest, concerned that FASB had jeopardized its credibility.
Lynn Turner, the SEC’s former chief accountant and a former FASB member, was one of them. He says he doesn’t think the banking industry will be satisfied until mark-to-market accounting is dismantled completely. “Despite efforts by FASB to give ground to the banks, enough is never enough,” he says.
But still, the banks prevail.
(h/t Felix Salmon)
Ryan Chittum is a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and deputy editor of The Audit, CJR’s business section. If you see notable business journalism, give him a heads-up at rc2538@columbia.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @ryanchittum.