"The only way to achieve comparability is to move to U.S. GAAP," said Niemeier.

Another common myth is that U.S. GAAP itself has become obsolete, according to the rule maker. On the contrary, he said, "The biggest difference between GAAP and IFRS is that GAAP is older and has been tried."

While U.S. GAAP has many rules, he admitted, there are good reasons for many of them. As an example, he cited FAS 5, the accounting standard on contingent liabilities, which is currently a subject of hot debate because of a FASB proposal to increase company disclosure of liabilities, primarily those stemming from lawsuits. Niemeier said FAS 5 was the result of a carefully worked out treaty between the AICPA and the American Bar Association in the 1970s. Its analogous international standard — IAS 37 — works well, he said, but only "outside the U.S. [where there is less litigation]."

Niemeier said the idea that IFRS will solve problems with the current U.S. financial reporting system is also a myth, and that those problems exist primarily because the United States has stopped dealing with them. "We are not addressing the problems by moving to IFRS." To deal with accounting problems, he said, "we need to face them head on. Moving to IFRS is an exit strategy, but it's not taking us where we need to go." Moving to IFRS, he said, is an "easier path than facing the limitations of our own system."

In a similar vein, Niemeier challenged the assertion that IFRS will be good for investors. "It's a great selling point if you are marketing something to say that IFRS is good for investors," said Niemeier, but that in fact, it might undermine the regulatory protections that U.S. investors currently enjoy. "IFRS has the potential to de-link us from our regulatory model," he said, noting that if someone wanted to get rid of the regulations put in place by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the best way to do so would be to move the United States to a system of standards that were more difficult to enforce.

Niemeier cited an International Accounting Standards Board committee that he said had found that a move to IFRS would make SEC regulation less stringent. It was not clear from his remarks which report he was referring to, but the idea that adoption of IFRS would loosen regulation has been strongly disputed by IASB chairman Sir David Tweedie. In an interview in the current issue of CFO magazine, Tweedie called similar charges "absolute nonsense."

Still, Niemeier insisted, there is an "inherent danger" in the desire to make the United States regulatory system more like that of other countries, arguing that the United States is unusual because 50 percent of the population is invested in stock market. With a large group of Baby Boomers about to retire and depend on those investments, he said, the United States has a moral obligation to maintain a system with less risk. By contrast, he said, Germany has just 10 percent of its population invested in stock market--a level that the United States hasn't seen since 1933.

"We are an extremely unique place and should deal with accounting standards accordingly," Niemeier said. The United States, he said should "return to a policy of convergence to achieve something noble, not convergence for uniformity's sake. We should strive for comparability, not just say it."

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