Lpc2000

I've run into a situation that I've had several times before but never
done anything about.  All of the sudden, code that was working (and
should be working) fine causes a processor data abort exception.
Before, I've always been able to rearrange the code and have the problem
go away but today I decided I should try to get to the bottom of it.  

The C code is a simple save-max-value statement of the form: if (x>y)
y=x;  (x and y are global unsigned longs) Here's the output from
arm-elf-objdump:

        if (USBOutCount>HighUSBOutCount) HighUSBOutCount=USBOutCount;
     378:	e59f3160 	ldr	r3, [pc, #352]	; 4e0
<USBPoll+0x1f8>
     37c:	e59f2168 	ldr	r2, [pc, #360]	; 4ec
<USBPoll+0x204>
     380:	e5931000 	ldr	r1, [r3]
     384:	e5923000 	ldr	r3, [r2]
     388:	e1510003 	cmp	r1, r3

The exception occurs at 384.  The contents around 4ec (end of the
routine, apparently a literal pool) are:

}
     4d4:	e91ba800 	ldmdb	fp, {fp, sp, pc}
     4d8:	000004f0 	streqd	r0, [r0], -r0
     4dc:	000004f4 	streqd	r0, [r0], -r4
     4e0:	00000000 	andeq	r0, r0, r0
     4e4:	000004ec 	andeq	r0, r0, ip, ror #9
     4e8:	000004e8 	andeq	r0, r0, r8, ror #9
     4ec:	0000000c 	andeq	r0, r0, ip

000004f0 <USBInit>:

void USBInit()
{
     4f0:	e1a0c00d 	mov	ip, sp

I'm an arm assembler novice, but it looks like 0000000c is getting
loaded into r2 and being used to access a memory location, but 000000c
isn't a valid memory location.  Alternatively, if I add 360 decimal to
pc (37c) I get 4e4 which holds 4ec which seems to point to a valid
address; OTOH the first variable (0x378+0x160) points to 0x4d8 which in
turn points to 0x4f0 which is code in the following routine USBInit()
(but this operation appears to execute successfully).  Like I said, I'm
not exactly sure how to interpret the assembler but I do know that it is
causing an exception.  Perhaps an assembler guru on the list can tell me
if there is a problem with this code, and more importantly, if it is a
compiler problem, how to escalate the issue to get it fixed.

Development environment is Ashling AsIDE running arm-elf-gcc 3.3.1.
Debug environment is Ashling Pathfinder 1.0.9A.

TIA,

Curt