Via The Accounting Onion.
Complacency exists in part because the certain cost of being anything more than passive is not expected to be offset by the uncertain benefits. The vast majority of investors choose to place their trust in the integrity of the financial reporting regulators – to have put in place a system that clearly signals when financial performance has lagged, or that excessive risks have been taken.
That the accounting standard setters have utterly failed to live up to the trust that investors have placed in them is the overarching theme of this blog. Only the notion of investor complacency can explain why investors have not yet stormed the FASB's headquarters, much as Egyptians demonstrated in Tahriri Square to protest a plutocracy operating behind the façade of democracy and due process.
I have no suggestions for altering the calculus leading to consistent investor complacency. The only solution is for regulators, most especially accounting standard setters, to embrace the reality that investors will not tend to exercise their right to be heard, rather than to exploit that vulnerability. For example, accounting standards should acknowledge that investor preferences dictate that disclosure – even under the best possible circumstances – cannot be an adequate substitute for financial statement recognition. They should also acknowledge that due process is clearly not working even though thousands of comments against a proposed standard have been received from issuers, largely with the objective of drowing out those few investors who care to be heard.
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