Posted on 01/13/2017 3:46:30 AM PST by expat_panama
...What do you call it when a major organization's financial statements are so deceptive and badly kept that even its auditor refuses to render an opinion? Answer: The federal government.
That's right, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal government's accountant, refused to hand down an opinion of the federal government's financial statements for 2016 "due to deficiencies that have plagued prior financial statements — persistent financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD), the government's inability to account for and reconcile certain transactions, an ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements, and significant uncertainties."
No question that, just like Enron, if this happened in the private sector, the executives in charge would either be fired or tried for fraud, and...
...Department of Defense, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Agriculture were all singled out by the GAO for criticism over their financial management.
But to be fair, controls seem to be quite lax everywhere in government.
In particular, the report cites the estimated $144 billion spent by the federal government in 2016 on "improper payments," a gain of 5% from 2015...
...At some point, those who now eagerly snap up our debts will say, "No, thanks." Then we'll have serious, difficult fiscal choices to make — and very likely an ugly kind of intergenerational warfare over taxes, benefits and spending will break out.
All because we can't be honest about the problems we face, as the GAO report indicates. It's a big vote of no-confidence in the government's fiscal management when the only solid conclusion the GAO can give us is that "absent policy changes, the federal government's fiscal path is unsustainable."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
FED prison to the dirtbags, deceivers, looters, liars, socialists, scumbags, conmen, collectivists, creeps, Clintons, criminals, CONgre$$ (past and present), frauds and FAKE politicians.
Socialism Is Legal Plunder - Bastiat
Land of the thieves, home of the slaves.
Too bad we can’t prosecute all the Big Government politicians who knew they would be out of office and dead when the SHTF. When the conservatives of the ‘40s, ‘50s, 60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s warned that the country’s fiscal spending was “unsustainable,” the Liberal Left discredited them and irresponsible voters voted for freebies paid for by Other People’s Money. That will not go on forever. When a nation has $20 TRILLION of admitted debt and unfunded liabilities of over $100 Trillion, it cannot survive.
You can’t be insolvent when paying your bills is only a few keystrokes on a machine that creates money out of thin air.
The U.S. doesn't finance its debt by creating money, it's done by borrowing. In this case, 'insolvency' would mean a threat of default and so far we've had no credible worry about the value of U.S. Treasury bills. Maybe a far better description would be by simply saying that Americans have overspend, and are going to have get used to doing without.
Sounds like a “yes.”
The Federal Reserve creates new money and then “buys” T-Bills with it.
That's true when that's all we're getting. What's really happening out there is we got LOTS of doom'n'gloomers. Here's today's batch that I ignored:
What you're really getting in theads like this is what's call my 'confirmation bias'. I'm just posting what I've already decided that I want to believe. iow, it's not the market that's crazy, it's just me.
Lot's of folks say that, truth is that the Fed only buys about one dollar of debt for every 8 sold.
A third gets bought up my foreigners, and we use that foreign money to buy foreign goods so we can have lots and lots of foreign gold, oil, coffee --the list goes on and on.
What's not to like?
One of the tenets of the liberal Frank Dodd bill was that C-suite officers of a company had to sign their financial statements so they could be held liable if fraud was later discovered. The feds are not held to these same rules.
It would be simpler, but it would be wrong.
My father graduated from medical school in 1947, as did I in 1976.
For good and for ill, the American population is uniquely maladapted to "doing with less".
As long as people are allowed to vote and elect their government, what is most likely to happen is for the debt to be repudiated. If there were a way to place a bet on that, I would do it right now.
...wrong... ...American population is uniquely maladapted to "doing with less"...
What you're saying is spot on, I failed to say precisely what I was thinking. When it comes to personal/private borrowing and spending Americans know exactly how to spend their own money because if they don't then they no longer have any of their own money for more overspending. What I was thinking about was how a big chunk of the U.S. population spend when they can tax and borrow other people's money ---and we're together on how this is what they've been allowed to do thru the welfare state.
...what is most likely to happen is for the debt to be repudiated...
If Hillary had won last Nov. I'd have agreed, but I'm cautiously optimistic that we're about to put all this back in order again. If you're not convinced that's good too, just let me know when you're ready to sell me your T-bills at ten cents on the dollar.
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