Jason Mendelson, co-founder and managing director of Foundry Group has a brilliant (brilliant in the sense that I agree with it 100%) guest post on VentureBeat: FAS 157 is stupid. It is a must-read post in which he discusses the new accounting rules (FAS 157) in effect regarding valuation of portfolio companies in the venture industry. Jason makes the point loud and clear about the “stupidity” that this represents.

In a well-intentioned but thoroughly misdirected effort to correct the accounting practices that occurred in cases like Enron, legislators and regulators have succeeded in doing little more than making the system even more obtuse, arcane, onerous, and, of course, “stupid.”