Writedowns are not all bad news; some companies actually want to make bigger ones.

With the value of hundreds of billions worth of balance sheet assets written down in the past year, investors have come to associate the phrase "writedown" with negative news. Who can blame them? It means value has fallen and it sounds suspiciously close to "write-off" - a phrase that everyone, accountant or not, understands. In the case of banks, which have borne the brunt of the writedowns, they have undoubtedly been painful, forcing many into new capital raisings.