U.S. not Jumping to Implement International Accounting Standards

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the U.S. is growing more hesitant to embrace a framework of international accounting standards already adopted by countries around the globe.

Having narrowly averted a debt default this week, U.S. officials fear an overhaul of accounting principles would be ill-timed in light of a fragile economic recovery and weak labor market.

International standards have been propounded by a number of agencies around the world as a means of streamlining financial procedures across borders while also making it easier for investors and analysts to compare businesses to others around the globe.

This week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published a plan that called for implementing only parts of the much-debated International Financial Reporting Standards, according to the Globe and Mail, effectively deferring on plans made four years ago to phase the framework into the public sector.

However, other analysts have suggested the reluctance may merely be another case of American exceptionalism.

"We didn't join the metric system when everybody else did," W. Anderson Bishop, CFO of Hallador Energy, told the the Wall Street Journal. "[U.S. accounting rules are] the gold standard … why would we want to lower our standards just to make the rest of the world happy?"