The Road to Global Accounting Rules Just Got Longer "I'm the decider," George W. Bush once famously said. I decide what is best. In the world of accounting, the dream of having just one decider, whose rules would apply everywhere, has repeatedly been endorsed by major governments around the world. Just last month, the Group of 20 countries reaffirmed support for "continuing work to achieve convergence to a single set of high-quality accounting standards." But it is not going to happen. There will be at least two major deciders - the Financial Accounting Standards Board in the United States and the International Accounting Standards Board in many other countries. There will be minor deciders in countries large and small who will decide which international standards they like and which they don't. Even when the rules appear to be the same, they may not be consistently interpreted and enforced. This week - days after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission made clear it was not going to move toward adoption of international standards anytime soon - the two boards found themselves in angry disagreement over one of the most contentious issues to emerge from the financial crisis: how banks should account for loans that may be going bad. The two boards had reached tentative agreements this spring - I'll get to some of the details later - but Leslie Seidman, the chairwoman of the American board, told a joint meeting of the two boards that bank regulators and others had voiced concern about the rules and that she wanted more time to work out guidance and details. "This is deeply embarrassing," responded Hans Hoogervorst, the chairman of the international board, which was meeting in London and was linked by videoconference to the American board's meeting in Norwalk, Conn. He said he feared "this whole thing is going to unravel" after three years of extensive effort. Whatever happens to bank accounting, the two boards may move farther apart in the near future. Currently four of the 16 members of the international board are Americans, but two of them - including Paul Pacter, a former top staff official of the American board - have terms expiring this year. Some Europeans, including Michel Barnier, a member of the European Commission, have suggested that the board should be limited to people from countries that use the rules. A quarter-century ago, there was, for all practical purposes, one decider for accounting rules for major companies around the world. That was the American board. Foreign companies that wanted access to the American capital markets had to either use American GAAP - generally accepted accounting principles - or reconcile their financial statements so readers could see how much money they would have made if they had used GAAP. But that dominance withered. In 1990, the Securities and Exchange Commission began allowing foreign issuers to sell securities to American institutional investors without changing their accounting, and over time new technologies made it much easier for even small American investors to buy stocks on overseas markets. In 2000, Arthur Levitt, then the S.E.C. chairman, took the lead in reorganizing the international board to make it a more credible standard-setter, and said he hoped that international rules might eventually be used in the United States. Four years ago, it appeared that time was near. The S.E.C., under the chairmanship of Christopher Cox, announced that foreign companies that traded in the United States would no longer need to reconcile their statements to American GAAP, so long as they followed international standards exactly as laid down by the international board. He began a process aimed at allowing, or perhaps even requiring, American companies to also use the international rules. By last year that "road map" was to have led to an S.E.C. decision, but it did not. Late last Friday, the commission issued a fairly saccharine staff report on the issue that made no recommendations. That report had been ready months ago. The push for international rules in the United States turned out to have little domestic support. The major accounting firms love the idea, and so do some large multinational companies. But many domestic companies fear the expense of changing. In recent years, the American and international boards have tried to move the two sets of rules together by adopting identical standards in various areas. That process worked in some areas, but it has produced sharp disagreements on rules for insurance companies, and now the latest dispute has erupted over bank rules.