Financial standards and regulations created or modified in the midst of any crisis should be considered carefully. This is particularly true with regard to the current review of accounting standards because these standards play an important role in public company financial disclosures, and these financial disclosures, in turn, are an important part of the foundation upon which fair and efficient capital markets are based. Financial crises have historically sparked panics in capital markets, and regulators and standard setters recognise that market panics should not be allowed to evolve into regulatory panics, where important regulatory fundamentals are inadvertently undermined in an effort to respond quickly to the symptoms – rather than the root causes – of a market crisis.