This is as about as succinct a statement as to what needs to be fixed as anything that I have thus far seen:

Our position was simple: products having no economic purpose except to achieve questionable accounting, tax or regulatory goals; or that raise serious concerns that customers will use them to issue materially misleading financial statements; or that meet any of the other bullet points in the 2006 statement’s list, should, at a minimum, be labeled presumptively prohibited.

—Susan P. Koniak, George M. Cohen, David A. Dana and Thomas Ross in a New York Times OP/Ed

Basically, any transaction that has as a significant part of its purpose to obscure the material health of the firm should be be used only with prior approval.

Of course, it’s much to sensible to be adopted, either in regulation by Geithner,^* et al, or in law by Congress.

^*But remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.