The critical task of setting account standards in the world’s most dynamic economy is the responsibility of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States struggled to build an effective structure for creating and implementing consistent accounting standards that would provide reliable, transparent and comparable financial data to capital markets participants. By the 1970s, market participants agreed that the U.S. needed an independent, authoritative body to administer this critical task. In 1973, the FASB was born as the private, not-for-profit organization dedicated to setting the financial accounting standards that collectively are known as U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or U.S. GAAP.