text: On April 2, the Financial Accounting Standards Board relaxed strict application of "mark to market" accounting mandates. A major culprit in the financial meltdown, mark to market was a set of relatively new accounting regulations that could force banks into making massive and unwarranted write-downs that could jeopardize their balance sheets. Needless and economically harmful, these rules are another example of how government intervention, rather than so-called market failure, helped to cause the current recession.