Federal Accounting Standards Board to Invalidate Off Books Qualified Special-Purpose Entities

The qualified special-purpose entities (QSPE) is an off the books accounting structure similar to the ones that Enron used to conceal its losses, and now it looks like the FASB will be instituting a revised rule, FAS 140, to eliminate them.

Basically, this means that billions, and perhaps trillions of dollars of exotic financial instruments would have to move to the balance sheet, which would show many banks to be undercapitalized or even insolvent.