"held for sale assets" must be marked-to-market every quarter

Bank accounting games

Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo and other banks are playing valuation games with "assets held to maturity". They really want to sell this garbage, but they can't except at prices that will cause them to raise more capital.

From here on out, any assets banks or brokerages move to the "assets held to maturity" class is extremely suspect.

Merrill Lynch (MER) set the tone for what such assets might be worth when it shocked everyone by announcing it sold CDOs at 22 cents on the dollar. The reality was much worse. Merrill Lynch actually got 5.5 cents on the dollar as noted in Ratchet Provisions Soak Merrill Lynch, Will Sink WaMu.