Did Financial Reporting contribute to the Global Financial Crisis

People sometimes ask me whether poor financial reporting, in particular the use of fair value measurement contributed to the Global Financial Crisis.

A recent article by Laux and Leuz in Accounting Organisations and Society reviews research on the question. It is linked from here.

The House of Lords Economic Affairs Select Committee is looking into the Audit Market. The meeting televised here considers the question of the financial crisis

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=6801

Ex-chancellor Nigel Lawson describes the auditors as the dogs that didn't bark. Tim Bush provides a number deficiencies of IFRS, including the loss of 'prudence'.

IAS Plus has a timeline on regulation which includes summaries of a number of financial reporting issues

http://www.iasplus.com/crunch/creditcrunch.htm#0911casey

Accountancy Age has numerous articles touching on the topic. A list of them can be found here

How to find the conceptual framework

Further to my previous post, I find that one can obtain free access to the new chapters 1 and 3 of the conceptual framework from the FASB website, where it is lurking disguised as SFAC 8.