Yup, here it is:
Arthur Andersen made $644 million mistake in NASA audit, US says
Posted on 07/16/2002 9:23:44 AM PDT by Smedley
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1990 3,206.6
1991 3,598.5
1992 4,002.1
1993 4,351.4
1994 4,643.7
1995 4,921.0
1996 5,181.9
1997 5,369.7
1998 5,478.7
1999 5,606.1
2000 5,629.0
2001 5,770.3
The first question being how can the U.S. government manipulate its books to make a $141 billion loss look like a $127 billion gain. Did they hire Authur Andersen? or did they cook their own books?
The second issue that arises is how can those scumbags on the hill justify new criminal penalties for corporate executives who manipulate the numbers!!!
The same way they vote pay and retirement package increases for themselves, through the dark art of legislative camouflage and deflection.
Yup, here it is:
Arthur Andersen made $644 million mistake in NASA audit, US says
Why those numbers are astronomical!!!!!
... as did the public in general by maxing out credit and continually spending more than they make.
The finagling that goes on in government is mammoth compared to business and the citizens. We have accepted increasing fraudlent explanations and intentions by our congress and the powers that be.
According to how the legal system thinks, by accepting these practices we are sending the message that it is 'okay' with us: we 'approve' and 'concur' with their actions. We have drawn no line anywhere and "the sky is the limit".
Witness the results of the last 30 years.
We have collectively done it to ourselves.
Mores the pity.
Right now, it is impossible to know if the overprojections made by executives at WorldCom were the result of deliberate fraud or simply came about because of boom-induced calculations. Everyone now knows that those calculation were in gross error, yet under the conditions that existed because of the Fed-caused artificial boom, WorldCom’s projections might very well have been reasonable. Congress, Accounting, and the Free Market (McCain is grandstanding again)
Just as politicians and bureaucrats have the gall of pointing their fingers at Enron, WorldCom etc, -- taking the "high road" when the government is by far the champion at cooking the books -- they would expect WorldCom guilty of following government bureaucrats destructive lead -- it was politician and bureaucrats irrational exuberance that lead the charge. The trio of Clinton, Greenspan and Rubin lead the charge followed by the unsuspecting business community and investing public.
The irony is that putting money in the stock market is speculation. Investment instruments or vehicles are savings accounts, guaranteed certificate of deposits (CDs), savings bonds and annuities -- if a person wants to speculate there's the commodities and futures markets, FOREX currency markets and stock markets. To name a few of each.
In terms of freedom of investment-and-speculation information the government has always held an oppressive and protectionist relationship with the financial and speculation markets as well as with the individual investors and speculators. Information about foreign investment instruments and speculation markets is basically non-existent in the United States. That's not because they're undesirable, for many lucrative off-shore opportunities do exist, rather, it's because the government controls an unfair market advantage against the people and their business community. Speculative and investment instruments are not advertised in the U.S..
That does not mean those projections were a good thing, given the conditions of the boom. Credit-induced booms are unsustainable, and someone must ultimately pay the piper. Congress, Accounting, and the Free Market (McCain is grandstanding again)
We had businesses that had no choice but to compete amongst themselves in an artificial boom. We had close to one hundred million investors that were in effect, speculating in markets. ...Speculating in markets orchestrated by the Clinton/Greenspan/Rubin trio's money/debt-bubble economy bound to protectionists' financial-market oversight was a sure to be followed by a proportionately-sized bust.
The unmitigated gall of politicians and bureaucrats to be blaming the business community and yanking on inventors bruised-emotional chains -- intentionally adding fuel to the fire -- encouraging them to call for "lynchings".
The government is not the solution, it is the problem! Ceaselessly creating a never-ending array of problems that need not exist in the first place.
The Genie is Out of the Bottle.
Congress has created so many laws that virtually every person is assured of breaking more than just traffic laws. Surely with all this supposed lawlessness people and society should have long ago run head long into destruction. But it has not.
Instead, people and society have progressively prospered. Doing so despite politicians creating on average, 3,000 new laws each year which self-serving alphabet-agency bureaucrats implement/utilize to justify their usurped power and unearned paychecks. They both proclaim from on high -- with complicit endorsement from the media and academia -- that all those laws are "must-have" laws to thwart people and society from self-destruction.
Again, despite not having this year's 3,000 must-have laws people and society increased prosperity for years and decades prior. How can it be that suddenly the people and the society they form has managed to be so prosperous for so long but suddenly they will run such great risk of destroying their self-created prosperity?
The government is the all time champion of cooking the books and it has the gall to point fingers at the whole business community because of a few bad apples. The entire business community and employees that support it should stand tall against a government feigning to protect the little guy from organizations that cook their books.
If there was ever a prime example of the fox guarding the hen house it is the government claiming to protect the little guy from organizations that cook their books. President Bush will have to militarily smash down terrorism. For that is his job. It's not the President's, congress' or the government's job to manipulate the economy.
The business community with their employees will have to stand tall against the PC-status-quo fox -- self-proclaimed authorities claiming/feigning they'll use the government to protect the little guy and a complicit media and academia that supports them; for they are all the fox -- to regain their rightful place as the champions of honest business that has always increased the well-being of people.
The government, having already manipulated the economy to almost no-end, President Bush can play the unbeatable five-ace hand of replacing the threat-of-force IRS and graduated income tax with a don't-pay-the-tax-if-you-don't-want-to consumption tax. For example, implement the proposed national retail sales tax (NRST). Not only would that win votes for Bush and republicans in congress it would boom the economy.
Where will it lead?
War of Two Worlds
Value Creators versus Value Destroyers
Politics is not the solution. It's the problem!
The first thing civilization must have is business/science. It's what the family needs so that its members can live creative, productive, happy lives. Business/science can survive, even thrive without government/bureaucracy.
Government/bureaucracy cannot survive without business/science. In general, business/science and family is the host and government/bureaucracy is a parasite.
Aside from that, keep valid government services that protect individual rights and property. Military defense, FBI, CIA, police and courts. With the rest of government striped away those few valid services would be several fold more efficient and effective than they are today.
Underwriters Laboratory is a private sector business that has to compete in a capitalist market. Underwriters laboratory is a good example of success where government fails.
Any government agency that is a value to the people and society -- which there are but a few -- could better serve the people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.
Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.
* * *
After all, in calling for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commissioner Harvey Pitt, McCain declares, “Government’s demands for corporate accountability are only credible if government executives are held accountable as well." Does that mean U.S. senators? Congress, Accounting, and the Free Market (McCain is grandstanding again)
"Too often, we have cooked the books, exploited off-balance sheet accounting, fudged budget numbers and failed to disclose fully the nation's assets and liabilities. If we in Washington are to have credibility in the public eye as we address the corporate accounting mess, we must reform our own fiscal practices," said McCain. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
Prove it first. It's not like it's a new discovery or problem. It's a seventy-year-old problem. It's just that now politicians and bureaucrats have trapped themselves and the general public is becoming increasingly aware. They've been caught and McCain is getting interview time to peddle gussied-up compassionate government.
"Allowing Americans to invest responsibly a small part of their payroll taxes will not only save Social Security, but will provide them with greater retirement income than those who no or will soon depend on Social Security checks," said McCain. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
Notice McCain so readily wants himself and government to allow Americans to invest part of their own money. But he has a condition; it most be done responsibly. And who decides what is responsible? Certainly not the all-time champion, cook-the-books bureaucrats and snake-oil-salesmen politicians.
They are running citizens and society headlong into destruction.
* * *
How mainstream media fits into the picture.
Robert Tracinski, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, said, "People leading the hysteria about corporate crime are eager to expose and condemn any alleged fraud by private businessmen, but they ignore or excuse actual fraud committed by government officials. [That would be reporters and journalists neglecting honest ethics.]
"They demand strict accounting regulations to prevent billion dollar business frauds while they evade responsibility for a trillion-dollar government fraud," he added.
He said it's ironic that no one in Washington is demanding an end to Social Security. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
It's only ironic if the person thinks the government has high standards of ethics, integrity and honesty. Or ironic because that's the image they want people to perceive. That's where the mainstream media and academia join the party -- a government party. Honest, hard-working citizens need not apply.
Reporters are too lazy to put forth the effort. They choose to open doors wherever possible and keep them open. The very people the media should be reporting as crooks, criminals and scoundrels are the ones they praise. What a colossal hoax it is. For of course the interviewee -- the bigger the better to which politicians and bureaucrats are among the biggest with academics and "specialists" bought by the media mantra of open all doors coming in right behind -- those people/ crooks being interviewed would never open the door if he or she knew that the reporter intended expose them as frauds.
There's a large and growing cadre of articulate, well-thought-out writers on the WWW. They are the opposite of the lazy reporters that rely on the easy-to-open doors of covering for crooks. In essence, they are unreal doors that can slam back shut in their face.
For the articulate writers on the Web, their open doors are among themselves, and their readers. Their essence is that they have to honestly earn an open door policy with their interviewees and they welcome their readers feedback. Often looking for other articulate writers of integrity and honesty among the feedback they get from readers.
That the mainstream media is liberal biased is not a reflection of congress or the alphabet bureaucracies. It is with both Republicans and Democrats that the government is what it is. The whole good-guy-bad-guy betwixt political parties is a ruse. For voting for the lesser of evils still begets evil.
As Mr. Brown used to jokingly ask us neighborhood kids, "Do you want a fat lip or a busted eyebrow?" That was not lost on me. From Democrats you get one, from Republicans you get the other. There are no winners and losers in politics for they (reps and dems) are two sides of the same coin. The only losers are the citizens, their prosperity and well-being which is mostly represented by the business community. The only winners are parasitical politicians and self-serving bureaucrats. ...Hot on their heels the mainstream media and academics catering to government crooks.
Yeah, I've heard the arguments supporting this, but that number includes future expected payments to things like Medicare and doesn't include future tax revenues, so I never put too much stock in that number
What difference does that make? Obligations to SS and Medicare are still debts, no different from the other interagency obligations that the BOPD does include on its web page. Nor do the figures you posted from that page include "future tax revenues."
The fact is, with an aging workforce and an immigrant population of net tax consumers, there will not be enough future tax revenues to pay off the debt.
There were surpluses in 2000 and 2001. G took in more in revenue than G expended during each of those years. Concurrently, G took on more liabilities in each of those years as well, since Total Debt increased in 2000 and 2001. Presumably, then, Total Assets have increased accordingly, due in part to the surpluses and in part to the increased debt. But I don't see the figures for TOTAL ASSETS, so I can't tell whether Arthur Anderson accounting practices were used in lieu of Generally Accepted Accounting Practices or not.
Does ANYONE have the Net Worth numbers for the U.S.? Total Asset values AND Total Liabilities?
The "Government" has NO assets or Liabilities. They are all "OURS" Live with it.
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