FASB publishes two proposals: Fair Value Measurements; accounting guidance for conditional asset Retirement Obligations.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board recently published two proposals. One exposure draft, Fair Value Measurements (comments due Sept. 7), seeks to establish a framework for measuring fair value that would apply broadly to financial and nonfinancial assets and liabilities, improving the consistency, comparability, and reliability of the measurements. The fair value framework would clarify the fair value measurement objective and its application under other authoritative pronouncements that require fair value measurements. Thus, the exposure draft would replace any current guidance for measuring fair value in those pronouncements. It also would expand current disclosures about the use of fair value to measure assets and liabilities. The disclosures focus on the methods used for the measurements and would apply whether the assets and liabilities are measured at fair value in all periods such as trading securities or in only some periods such as impaired assets.

Also in June the FASB...