Principles
Recently, the FASB and the IASB allowed companies the option of recognizing in their financial statements the fair values of their long-term debt. That is, companies have the option to change the balance sheet value of their long-term debt to the debt's fair value and report the change in balance sheet value as a gain or loss in income. In terms of the qualitative characteristics of accounting information (Chapter 2), briefly describe the potential trade-off(s) involved in reporting long-term debt at its fair value.