Dennis Beresford, a part-time lecturer at the J.M. Tull School of Accounting in the Terry College of Business, was quoted in an American Banker article about the role of fair value accounting in the evaporation of large segments of credit markets.
“Clearly there are business decisions that are being influenced by the accounting, and companies are having to account for things at fair values that are not based on deep, broad markets,” said Beresford, also a former Financial Accounting Standards Board chairman and current chairman of Fannie Mae’s audit committee. “The liquidity of the market is such that a lot of prices are probably not what most people would feel are fair and appropriate in normal circumstances. But that’s still what the market price is.”