Directions: Complete the passage with the best choice. There was a time when the American accounting system was the envy of the world, .......... it encouraged millions of average people to invest, thus transforming America into the world's first mass equity culture.

Boosting the integrity and standards of the Financial markets is a critical imperative

Its transparency, uniformity and credibility allowed investors to make intelligent comparisons among US corporate earnings statements

Regulators and analysists should have embraced it or at least something very much like it

There are almost as many measures of earnings today as there are companies

it offers them a road map to restoring investor confidence though there are shortcomings in the proposal