The Securities and Exchange Commission has modernized its oil and gas company reporting requirements for the first time in more than 25 years.

Hopefully there will be many lessons learned from the Bernard Madoff scandal once there is a better understanding of exactly what happened. I am sure there will be a number of in-depth books written on the subject. There will be chapters on asset allocation, due diligence, risk management, the SEC, internal operations of investment companies, compliance officers, investment advisors, fund of funds, hedge funds, auditors, peer review, whistleblowers, independent custodians, lawsuits, transparency, and regulatory change. All of the above are very interesting, but the chapter that I am most interested in is the one on human nature.

Members of the Financial Accounting Standards Board came under pressure to relax fair value accounting rules when banking regulators would not change their capitalization requirements. FASB decided to loosen rules that kept banks from accounting for the cash flows they expected from mortgage-backed securities and other assets during impairment tests when they are categorized as available for sale, rather than just as held to maturity.

The Internal Revenue Service is proposing temporary regulations on foreign base company sales income.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued the first of two proposed standards intended to simplify the accounting for financial instruments in response to the financial crisis.

The International Accounting Standards Board has proposed requiring companies to provide additional disclosures on all their investments in debt instruments, other than those classified in the fair value through profit or loss category.

David Friehling, the auditor at the tiny accounting firm that handled Bernard Madoff's books, has been subpoenaed by investigators.