By caving into pressure from Wall Street, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) just single-handedly added at least 20% to the value of major banks burdened with formerly toxic waste. What just happened is that FASB passed an accounting ruling that allows the banks to decide the value of its toxic waste rather than letting the market set a price.

Many people are wondering when this recession/depression will end. Well the waiting is over.

Tomorrow a group of accountants will vote on a new accounting rule that will end the financial crisis. This rule, called FAS 157-e, permits banks to make up the value of assets they carry on their books that nobody wants to buy. By letting banks put whatever value they choose on these assets, they will no longer need to tell investors just how badly those assets have deteriorated.

This is obviously fantastic news for the global economy. We can now get back the $12.8 trillion we've spent bailing out the bad bets of banks and insurance companies. That's because the toxic waste that has so far caused them to take $3 trillion in write-offs is no longer toxic. In fact, the banks can mark those assets just as high as they want -- taking a profit by valuing them at, say, $1.20 instead of the 60 cents at which they're currently priced on their books. This increase in value will instantaneously give the banks as much capital as they want.

I have been posting so much bad news over the last couple of years that I thought it would be interesting to try something different for a change: look for something that's truly good. If I can find it, I'll tell you what the good news is, why it's important, and what it means for the rest of the world.

The SEC has a big share of the responsibility for the financial catastrophe greeting our 44th president. For example, in 2004 it passed a ruling which allowed financial institutions (FIs) to borrow as much money as they wanted -- which leveraged them up to $30 of debt for every dollar of capital -- and it repeatedly missed opportunities to shut down Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

So it may come as a surprise to note that the SEC has done something right. What's that? It elected to keep an accounting rule that the banking industry was trying to get repealed. It is called mark-to-market and it requires FIs to adjust the value of their assets to reflect those assets' current market value even if they plan to hold them for years. (Ironically, mark-to-market meant the opposite to Enron which used a rule with the same name to record as current revenues potential gains it might make in energy trades 20 years in the future.)

Newt Gingrich has gone on the record with a solution to the crisis that is the best I have seen so far. Rather than pass a $700 billion bailout, suspend the accounting rules that are causing the liquidity crisis to begin with.

In the past few years, accounting rules changed and these changes are in part causing the current crisis. Specifically, the problem is mark-to-market accounting where all assets are required to be valued at current market prices. If the market is temporarily depressed, it can cause an artificial crisis.

Let me give a silly but simple illustration. If you have 20 one dollar bills in your wallet, we would all agree you have a net worth of $20. Thirsty Bob also has one dollar bill in his wallet and walks into the break room and wants to buy a Coke. Soda in the machine costs 50 cents, but it only takes quarters. Thirsty Bob asks if anyone has change and they all say no. Sam says he has only two quarters and will trade Thirsty Bob -- who is really thirsty -- two quarters for a dollar. Thirsty Bob quickly agrees to take Sam up one his offer in order to get the Coke now. Bob knows that two quarters for a dollar is a bad deal, but he is takes the deal anyway.