I’m all for transparency and mark to market. As Roger Ehrenberg has blogged about consistently, investors need to know what the underlying securities are worth inside banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, hedge funds, private equity funds, and yes venture capital funds.

The FASB (which governs accounting standards in this country) recently issued a new rule called FAS157. I’m not going to get technical on you, and the accountants in the community can weigh in via the comments if they feel the need for more rigor in this discussion.

In layman’s terms, FAS157 says that you have to value your investments at “fair market value.”

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Hard to know what to get excited about regarding David Faber’s report on CNBC this morning alleging that Sprint Nextel (S) is in talks with various parties that are “not informal”–in Faber’s words–to sell its struggling Nextel unit. Faber says private equity funds (remember them?) “aligned with telecom” are among interested parties, as is the Nextel International affiliate, better known as NII Holdings (NIHD).

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