They eased up on the guidelines of what the value of the investments are that a bank is holding.

The trouble stemmed from the problem of banks with mortgages on their books. Even if the mortgages were performing at 100%, they had to reduce the value of the asset on their books because the market value of the mortgages was lower than their value to the banks. Because they had to use a market value, and the market was valuing mortgage-backed securities extremely low, this had the effect of hurting many banks' book values.

They have backed off on this a little bit. Rather than "market value," the FASB is using the term "fair value." The banks will have greater leeway in putting a value on the assets they own. So rather than figuring out what the market would pay for an asset, they can figure out the value on their own.

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