Investments at Fair Value

When we value investments at fair value, we mark up or down the value of the investments. The other side of the JE is either to net income or OCI.

The current criteria (found in the SU on Cash and Investments) is to separate changes in value due to instrument specific credit risk and changes not from this credit risk.

What do you think about this? Is it worth all that work to separate? Make a case either for continuing with this or for putting all the change in value in net income or in OCI or come up with some other reasonable alternative. This is a discussion so, you can be opinionated about this topic.

Of course, the theory to all of this is whether the company should get credit for changes in investment value and how much of that credit should the company be able to take. (We do assume that for most companies, the investment values will go up, right?)