US accounting standard setters might be tightening the rules for banks, forcing them to take off balance sheet toxic vehicles on to their books but don't expect the banks to take that lying down. Up until now, the banks had kept assets and liabilities including mortgages and credit-card receivables off their balance sheets and regulators say the change will result in $900 billion in liabilities being put on the balance sheets of the nation's 19 largest banks that have just completed the Treasury's stress tests. These off balance sheet items left the US economy in smoking ruins. They inflated the credit bubble by letting banks originate and sell loans without having to put aside much capital for them. As a result, the banks were making a whole bunch of bad loans banks with no adequate buffer against losses.

But the banks are fighting back. The Wall Street Journal reports that the bank are trying to delay that accounting rule, They have called in the Chamber of Commerce, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and the American Council of Life Insurers to write to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner trying shelve the accounting rule change. They are also spending millions lobbying Congress. Not content with their $700 billion bailout, the banks want to keep investors in the dark. There's nothing US banks hate more than transparency.

As Bloomberg columnist David Reilly writes, investors will be the losers. And with the Fed reportedly uneasy about the accounting change, it looks like US Government will want to repeat the same mistakes that plunged global markets into a crisis.