OPINION: "Closing the Information GAAP," by L. Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal, 8 September 2008, p. A17.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) has been the de facto Western/emerging global standard for a long time. But now our SEC says the U.S. will transition to Europe's (actually London-driven) International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which is described—despite the oxymoronic names—as actually constituting a shift from tighter rule to more flexible standards. Might seem like a step backwards, but it isn't. Really reflecting the attempt to homogenize a global rule set that now covers a far wider amount of national variance—a sign of these frontier-integrating times. So we bow to the Core's new winner on this all-important rule set, befitting Europe's emergence as a sort of rule-set superpower all its own. Why does IFRS win? Simple, according to the experts IFRS captures the underlying economics more accurately than GAAP does—survival of the fittest rule set in globalization.