The background history of Mark to Market accounting is unclear, but some said it was develop by multinational companies that made business in different markets where price-up was available in order to account for higher profits. The use of mark to market accounting took strength in the 1980’s between big commercial banks, future traders, and corporation; however, the use of this new type of accounting raised controversies and scandals in the market place. The basic definition of mark to market accounting is mechanism of allocation of value to an asset or financial instrument using the current fair market price and comparing it with similar assets. Other name for mark to market accounting is known as the Fair Value accounting which has been part of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) since late 1980’s.Afer, the during 1990”s the utilization of Fair Value accounting increase due to the demand from investor for real-time financial statements that provide more accurate information. One example of how mark to market accounting works is when a future trader takes one position, then he makes a deposit with the exchange called “margin”. The margin protects the exchange against any loss, then at the end of the trading day the contract is marked to the present market value. If the trader is on the money making side the contract might have increase in value, and if the trader is in the other side where the price of the contract has decrease the trader has to pay additional money into his account in order to maintain the position of the asset. The controversial part of mark to market accounting results in the fact that banks and companies have the possibility of either increase or decrease the price of the asset of contact toward their advantage in order to make fraud. One of the most controversial cases involving mark to market accounting happened during the 1990’s in the case of ENRON which used Fair Value accounting in order to inflated the price of their stocks and the manipulation of accounting books. Some of the recent ways to regulate this practice are The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that was passed and signed into law on October 3, 2008. On October 7, 2008, the SEC began to conduct a study on "mark-to-market" accounting, as authorized by Sec. 133 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.   Cited work http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/23/mark-to-market-opinions-columnists_reco...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark-to-market