Posted on 11/19/2022 11:09:23 AM PST by Roman_War_Criminal
The U.S. Department of Defense has, once again, failed a comprehensive financial audit. The audit is the fifth comprehensive review the department has completed, and the fifth where auditors were unable to find sufficient record keeping for the DoD to pass off on a clean audit.
This year’s DoD-wide audit report involved 27 smaller component audits, of which seven component audits received “unmodified opinions,” which mean that auditors determined the underlying military financial information was recorded fairly and in line with U.S. accounting standards. One component audit received a “qualified opinion,” meaning auditors found material accounting misstatements that were not pervasive.
The remaining 16 component audits were listed with “disclaimers of opinion,” meaning the auditors were unable to find complete enough financial records to provide an audit opinion. The disclaimers of opinion accounted for 47 percent of the DoD’s total assets and at least 71 percent of the DoD’s total budgetary resources.
The DoD, as a whole, also received a “disclaimer of opinion.” With auditors saying “DoD management did not report materially complete balances in the Agency-Wide Financial Statements as required by the Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanmilitarynews.com ...
Bkmk
I assume from this that our Military is completely innefective/corrupt
On its balance sheet, auditors determined the DoD had about $3.5 trillion in financial assets and $3.7 trillion in liabilities.
Accounts receivable and accounts payable?
Are tanks and bombers financial assets?
Should the military have a positive net worth?
What should it be?
On Thursday, Republicans in the House of Representatives introduced legislation to more thoroughly audit U.S. aid flowing to Ukraine.
Yes, I saw the word introduced, but maybe..................
What if all/most of the weapons that were supposed to go to Ukraine were just sold for profiteering?
Since the Ukrainians have been busy shooting them at the Russians, that seems unlikely. And put together everything sent to Ukraine has been a pittance vs the assets of the US military.
A balance sheet is supposed to balance; assets are always supposed to equal liabilities at any given moment in time. Accounts payable and accounts receivable are always listed on balance sheets, so they’re not missing.
Tanks and bombers would count as inventory on a balance sheet, and thus an asset, albeit an illiquid one.
A balance sheet has nothing to do with “positive net worth”, unless the total equity is positive. Equity and retained earnings are always treated as liabilities, as means of balancing the ledger when assets otherwise outpace debts and other short term or long term liabilities.
What this means is that either $0.2 trillion in assets are unaccounted for, or there are $0.2 trillion in ‘nonexistent’ liabilities on the books.
Either way, accounting shenanigans are involved.
Yo Top.
We can’t find 2 cases of 81mm, 2 thousand rounds of 7.62mm nor 2 pounds of C4.
Damn, what are you going to tell the CO?
5.56mm
Doesn’t surprise me at all.
Web search for “pentagon lost billion dollars”
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+pentagon+lost+billion+dollars&ia=web
Some results - trillion
I dont think the DOD has ever passed an audit.
Granted, its only started being audited as a whole in 2017.
What this means is that either $0.2 trillion in assets are unaccounted for, or there are $0.2 trillion in ‘nonexistent’ liabilities on the books.
Valuation of military assets must be very iffy. $.2 trillion may not be much in the scheme of things.
You are correct in what the balance sheet does and does not tell us. In truth, those figures don’t tell us much.
And let the auditors off the hook.
To clarify my question, as a point of philosophy/mgt, should the military have a positive equity and how much? I wonder what that number was on the balance sheet?
Should any govt agency have a positive equity? I think the answer is no, from the perspective of the agency mgt as that means their budget is reduced the following year.
Just thinking.
And for the record. all books are cooked. I think it is impossible to keep perfect books with all the complexity and bureaucracy. Excepting your balance sheet and mine.
Close enough for gub’mint work
“I assume from this that our Military is completely innefective/corrupt”
No. Having been directly involved as a program manager, I can attest that the accounting is extremely complex. The number of rules and regulations are huge and sometimes contradictory. Imagine income taxes, but on a whole other level. You say it’s this and I say it’s that and we can both find a rule justifying why we say that. The only place I ever saw what I thought was fraud was on Future Combat Systems, but I witnessed the GAO auditor covering it up. The reason, I expect, was that people in Congress were in on it. Incidentally, I sent a letter to Congressman Mccain. He was supposed to be holding an investigation on FCS but never did.
What it indicates is that the top cheese are stealing everything not tied down. Every one at the top has a scam going on with kickbacks and bribes galore.
Every time the military fails an annual financial audit, reduce the rank of all flag officers involved by two stars.
Have we concluded yet that the Pentagon is one big money laudering operation?
However, the military has a bloated bureaucracy with an exceptional amount of waste. Especially during peace time. As a young Marine I spent two weeks every year on either mess duty or base maintenance. Base maintenance meant I mowed lawns, painted signs and the obligatory rocks. Mess Duty meant staffing the mess halls doing the general labor, cleaning and serving food. Mess and Maintenance is currently contracted or work done by a WG Fed employee. Active Duty Military members filled those jobs for decades and many jobs being contracted or filled with Fed employees could be done by service members. The problem is the military is no longer an attractive career choice, for good reason. They suffer from personnel shortages.
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