During the crisis, Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman's chief executive, noticeably stood out among his investment banking brethren because he argued vociferously against an industrywide push to relax mark-to-market accounting.
Edward L. Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association, said he hoped to use the meeting with Mr. Obama to make the case for relaxing mark-to-market rules, which require financial institutions to value their investment securities at current market prices.
Financial stocks were higher, on anticipation that the Financial Accounting Standards Board will relax mark-to-market rules.
Well practiced, he strategically left his leather satchel, holding various-size folders he could stash things in, by the studio door, along with the beer he had brought to relax his mark.
(See "U.S. Jobless Claims Hit 26-Year High").. Despite the gloomy unemployment data, financial stocks paced a sharp rise and built on gains after the Financial Accounting Standards Board announced said it would relax its mark-to-market rule.
To work our way out of the current morass, it will be necessary to relax the mark-to-market rules for banks on valuing the assets that need to be taken off of their balance sheets.
But the banks would much rather keep pretending that their toxic assets are not that toxic, and worth much more than they really are -- a risky charade the relaxed mark-to-market rules allow them to continue to pull off.
In addition, financial regulators relaxed the so-called mark-to-market rules, making it easier for bank holding companies to refrain from writing down the value of assets for which there is no market.
And, while he seems relaxed, he is mentally marking the pieces that work, and where he and other collaborators - from Tunisian singer Mounir Troudi to Mauritanian singer and harpist Noura Mint Seymali - will fit in to the live show.
That year, 2009, was also the year that politicians put heavy pressure on the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets accounting rules, to relax rules on marking securities to market value.
With the tops of your dimples marked, relax your mouth.
