The United States should not rush to abandon its long-standing, painstakingly developed accounting rule book, nor should it give up leverage over how accounting rules are established in the United States, said Leslie Seidman, chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board in back-to-back speeches this week.

As FASB has toiled away making U.S. accounting rules more like international rules to facilitate a possible adoption, board members have held their opinions to themselves about whether or how international rules should be adopted in the United States. Now Seidman is breaking her silence.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's “condorsement” idea – where the United States would gradually cut over to International Financial Reporting Standards by converging to and endorsing IFRSs on a standard-by-standard basis – has some merit, said Seidman in speeches to the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy and the New York State Society of CPAs. “Condorsement shows U.S. support for the ongoing development of global accounting standards,” she said.

The plan, as mapped out in a staff paper published by the SEC in May, would retain U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in the United States, which has numerous practical benefits, Seidman said. It would provide for the United States to remain involved in the continued development of new accounting standards, she said, and it outlines a gradual process for continuing to deal with significant differences between U.S. and international rules.

The SEC has described the condorsement plan as one possible approach to adopting IFRS in the United States, but it hasn't endorsed the plan, nor has it discussed other ideas in nearly the same detail. Facing significant international pressure to join most of the rest of the industrialized world in adopting IFRS, the SEC has promised a decision by the end of 2011.

In Seidman's view U.S. stakeholder want to continue to have a strong voice in how accounting standards are written, and they want FASB to be involved as well. “Is this isolationist?” she asked. “I don't think so. I think it is an acknowledgment that if we want a global standard that the U.S. follows, it has to work here, in our environment, and we can work cooperatively to bring those insights to the discussion on a timely basis.”

Seidman proposes the United State should seek a substantive role in the rulemaking process, which now is governed solely by the International Accounting Standards Board, to assure U.S. influence over international rules. “I believe there are other countries around the world that also would seek substantive roles for their national standard setter in the process, such as Japan,” she said. “I think there is a way to leverage the national processes and resources that exist, and with proper coordination, bring them to the development of international standards.”