Re: Fraud? Another example of re-engineering accounting:

Mortgage-Market Trouble
Reaches Big Credit Unions
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121842336441828975.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

To address what it says is a misleading financial picture, the federal regulator, the NCUA, plans this month to revise an accounting rule to allow corporate credit unions to more clearly highlight in their federal filings these funds, called membership capital.

The corporate credit unions showing the biggest losses, U.S. Central and Western Corporate, reacted to the mortgage-market turmoil with an unusual accounting change. They reclassified some assets in a way that allows them to avoid recording any more unrealized losses. Executives at those firms say the shift, which was reviewed by regulators, frees them from reporting losses on investments they have no plans to sell.

Critics say the move is accounting window dressing that covers up real problems. “What all of a sudden changed?” says Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission. “The only reason to do it is to avoid reporting further losses in the financial statements.”

This is yet another dour reference by Yves directed at The FOMC, Treasury and FASB collusion and accounting fraud relating to the on-going theme of long tails associated with discovery and interrogatories.

The salad as a mixture brings about the question as to if this matter is an appetizer or a main course, but obviously a salad is not an hors d’oeuvre, thus I assume that this is an allusion to covered bonds and the pea-and-shell-like accounting fraud where problematic derivative debt will be repackaged from spoiled defaulting, decaying dead hybrid securities into a new mixture of freshly tossed, renamed, re-rated, newly hyped government sponsored entity that will morph into the next iconic solution to bail out wall street friends — with the full blessing of the powers that be.

Obviously, superstitions led to the widespread extermination of cats in Europe in medieval times, which thus aggravating The Black Plague, which may have never have been so dark, had enough cats been left to keep rat populations down. The plague was spread by fleas carried by infected rats.

I smell a rat!