Accounting standards don't exactly do much to counter the grey image of accountants. It is always going to be hard to get the wider population excited about something called FAS 157.

But this one has a subtitle, "Fair Value Measurement", that gets plenty of people going. Those against the concept of fair value measurement (and there are some very excited people in this camp) complain that even its name is unreasonable; that "fair value" sounds so, well, fair, like the free trade supporters in the US who worry that the anti-free traders' talk of "fair trade" is a PR stunt to distort the debate.