The financial sector is turning its attention to audit regulators to seek relief from draconian views on the values that should be booked for toxic assets languishing in the market.

More than a dozen banking, insurance, and real estate advocacy groups, most notably the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association, are imploring the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to direct auditors away from overly pessimistic views on fair value. The 15 groups sent a letter to Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Chairman Mark Olson calling for “guidance and standards” to assure auditors are on board with recent, more moderate views from the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission on the use of market pricing to establish fair value.

The groups acknowledge being critical that the SEC and FASB so far haven’t moved swiftly or dramatically enough to alter uses of market pricing for determining fair value when markets are dysfunctional. However, they say the SEC and FASB actions taken so far have provided “positive incremental change” in fair value application and auditing guidance is necessary to assure they have effect.

“In part, because all components of the financial reporting community are not on the same page, drastic write-downs of certain illiquid assets that are not required to be written down under the literature continue and the credit markets remain frozen, further accelerating the downward spiral of the overall economy,” the groups wrote to the PCAOB. “Simply put, the left hand should not use a club to remove the instrument of reasonable accounting reforms from the right hand.”

A PCAOB spokesman said the board is following developments in the economy and evaluating whether they warrant any changes to auditing standards. “If future guidance is needed, we will not hesitate to act,” the spokesman said.

The staff of the PCAOB, led by recently departed Chief Auditor Tom Ray, published alerts to auditors addressing the auditing of fair-value measurements. In December 2008, the staff published an alert that addressed a number of issues for auditors to consider in the current economic environment, including fair-value measurement. In December 2007, the staff published an alert dedicated solely to auditing fair-value measurements.