AN ARTICLE OF FAITH?

摘要

The financial crisis has cast a rather glaring spotlight on the role of financial regulation and the importance of accountability and transparency. Questions have been asked about accounting standards and the standard-setting process in debates about the effectiveness of these regulatory activities. How do we know that they work? And work for whom?rnOne doesn't have to turn the pages of history very far back to see that the same debates were being had in the 1970s. Oscar Gellein, a former member of the US Financial Accounting Standards Board, observed: 'How should the standard-setting process be organised to furnish a reasonable basis for believing that consequences that might be expected did in fact ensue and that unwarranted material ones do not occur?'1 That is a really good question, and one that National Standard-Setters, a group of leading standard-setters from around the world, have turned their attention to.