SEC Signals Mark-to-Market Likely to Remain -- Why change now? The damage was done as of Sept. 15 & the market & credit meltdown that followed.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Federal securities regulators won't suspend the mark-to-market accounting rule that banking lobbyists and some conservative Republican lawmakers blame for exacerbating the credit crunch, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Banking lobbyists have been hoping that the SEC would give them greater flexibility in applying the rule since they blame it for the woes at the nation's largest financial institutions.

Mark-to-market accounting requires companies to value financial assets at their fair value -- the price they can fetch in the market. That has led companies to take big write-downs on thinly traded securities, even if the underlying assets aren't severely troubled. The write-downs have put pressure on prices of financial firms' stocks and forced many of them to sell assets or raise money to stay well above the capital requirements that have been set by regulators.