Or they can stay in Westchester, paying off the mortgage for 30 more years, all the while risking that those heady unrealized profits will evaporate.

Accounting rule makers voted to force financial institutions to report the unrealized profits or losses in their bond portfolios.

Rule 3-04 requires that inter-company items and transactions in the consolidated financial statements being filed and unrealized inter-company profits and losses shall be eliminated.

In exchange for canceling unrealized profits in vested stock options, additional shares will be issued to these same executives.

But the lower the market drops, the smaller the unrealized profits become and the closer the banks come to slipping below the 8 percent capital standard.

Some analysts worry that banks will apply that power to set aside "honey pots" of unrealized profits on successful venture capital investments.

When Japanese share prices were soaring in the 1980's, much was made of the banks' "hidden assets" - unrealized profits on shares they held in other companies.

To do that, they have relied in part on unrealized profits on stocks they bought years ago at much lower prices.

In today's market, however, those unrealized profits have shrunk so much as to nudge the weakest and even some moderately weak banks below the 8 percent capital standard.

Investors view their unrealized profits as gamblers do their casino winnings: it is the house's money at stake.