Free Republic

Imagine a vast ledger, chronicling the transactions of a mighty republic, now riddled with deliberate gaps and omissions, gaps no auditor may probe, no citizen may question. This is no fanciful dystopia, but the present reality, quietly authorized by what is known as Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56 (SFFAS 56). While initially crafted, perhaps, with honorable intentions to shield 'classified' operations from hostile eyes, SFFAS 56 now threatens the very transparency and public accountability that sustain a free government. Federal agencies are allowed to use SFFAS 56 to hide spending they desire to be 'classified' from the American...

Financial writer and precious metals broker Bill Holter is back with a new warning on the effects of the Trump DOGE team (Department of Government Efficiency). Everyone now knows of the huge unfolding fraud and waste being uncovered in federal government audits. It simply has to be done for the nation to survive, but what many are missing are the consequences of these audits that are unavoidable. Holter and his former business partner Jim Sinclair (RIP) laid out the US bankruptcy scenario nearly five years ago on USAW. The post was titled “Trump Win Offers a Way Forward After US...

On July 25, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a damning report revealing an additional $2 billion in accounting errors related to the Pentagon’s aid to Ukraine.This discovery compounds the $6.2 billion overestimation previously disclosed, bringing the total to an alarming $8.2 billion in misallocated funds. The discrepancies arose from the Pentagon’s use of “replacement value” instead of “depreciated value” in calculating the aid provided under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA). The PDA, authorized by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, allows the President to direct the transfer of defense articles and services from U.S. stocks to address foreign...

Freeper gubamyster passed away on December 10, 2022 at the age of 59. His name was James Ryan Williams II. He was an accountant, and lived in Huntington Beach, CA. "Gub" was a regular on the Weekly Dose of the Trump Family Train, and was known for his wry sense of humor and his witty repartee. He was married with four children. He loved baseball, and we followed the exploits of his oldest son, who played for his college baseball team. At the link, there is a picture of Gub and video tribute. We noticed he was not posting sometime...

An interview with author Mark Cook to discuss his 2022 published book on the decipherment of Linear A.Rewriting History : The decipherment of Linear A and a history of Egypto-Cretan relations | 33:44Mark Cook | 5 subscribers | 258 views | April 27, 2023

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is alleged to have said that when spies smell roses, they look for the funeral. And so, as an old spy, I smelled roses when Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky came to town just before Christmas. Zelensky was loved. He again showed his country’s bravery against Putin’s brutal war and in doing so gave a bravura performance speaking to Congress and the American public of his worthy cause ­— a cause for which the United States has given nearly $50 billion in a year’s time, with more already pledged. Expensive roses for a worthy cause. Still,...

I am looking to an alternative business/accounting site that caters to patriotic businesses. Quick books or intuit charges me for services I don't want or need. The charge has gotten outrageous. I heard an ad one day about a website that caters to patriotic Americans but I didn't write down their name. I know my Freeper friends will come through as always.

Ernst & Young, one of the top accounting firms in the world, is being fined $100 million by federal regulators after admitting its employees cheated on their ethics exams. For years, the firm's auditors had cheated to pass key exams that are needed for certified public accountant licenses, the Securities and Exchange Commission found. Ernst & Young also had internal reports about the cheating but didn't disclose the wrongdoing to regulators during the investigation. "It's simply outrageous that the very professionals responsible for catching cheating by clients cheated on ethics exams of all things," Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the...

Only the foolish will get vaccinated and wear a mask now. The New Year is here! It’s time for an Omicron party! Everyone get sick and save your community with herd immunity! What’s a few days feeling under the weather when you can protect your children’s future? Now it’s time for accountability.

The former prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy sat down for an interview on his three-volume 'Prison Journal' touching on his incarceration, Cardinal Becciu and Vatican finances. When Cardinal George Pell took a leave of absence in 2018 from his post as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy and returned to Australia to stand trial for his “historic sexual abuse” case, he was the highest ranking Church official to be swept up in a decades-long global scandal that has shattered victims and wreaked havoc on the Church’s moral credibility. Convicted in 2018, he would spend...

In 2018, California resident Steven Childs wanted to know how much the state paid to a single vendor over a five-year period. Instead of the data, California Controller Betty Yee sent him an invoice for $1,250. Childs asked more questions and the Controller’s chief counsel, Rick Chivaro, admitted the state held electronic records and “warrant records” akin to “maintaining a checking account online.”Today, in a Sacramento superior court, the controller denies having a checkbook and claims the warrant register doesn’t contain vendor information. The Golden State is the only state in the nation not to produce state spending under open...

Actress Alyssa Milano has settled a legal battle with her former accountant as the case was on the verge of going to trial. Milano and her husband, agent David Bugliari, filed suit in 2017, alleging that accountant Kenneth Hellie had forged her signature on checks, failed to pay overdue bills and taxes and allowed costs to balloon on their home remodeling project. Hellie filed a countersuit, accusing Milano and Bugliari of ignoring repeated warnings to rein in the remodeling project and stop spending. The case was set to go to trial on Aug. 19 in the Van Nuys Superior Court....

"""Where has $850m gone? Bill de Blasio's wife can't account for staggering amount of taxpayer money that the NY Mayor gave her for mental health project""" Chirlane McCray was assigned a $850million budget for her ThriveNYC program But records show scheme has failed to keep track of what it spent the money on The small amount of data that was collected shows it fell far short of targets Despite that, organizers have expanded the budget to $1billion over five years

4:21 p.m. Paul Manafort's longtime deputy has been called to the witness stand to testify against the former Trump campaign chairman. Rick Gates has been regarded as a crucial government witness ever since he pleaded guilty last year and agreed to cooperate in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Prosecutors will turn to Gates for first-hand support of their accusations that Manafort concealed millions of dollars in foreign income and later lied when he applied for bank loans. Manafort's defense has sought to blame Gates for any illegal conduct and accused him of embezzling millions of dollars. Gates and Manafort worked...

Leading U.S. audit, tax, and advisory firm KPMG LLP today broke ground for construction of its $400 million learning, development, and innovation facility in the Lake Nona community of Orlando and forecasted hiring some 330 people statewide over the next three years. The firm announced on January 9 its commitment to create a 55-acre, state-of-the-art campus with 800,000 square feet of space for meeting, classroom, residential, and dining facilities. The campus will feature cutting-edge technology, including an innovation center that will support training and client engagement, and a heritage center to highlight the firm’s rich history and culture. KPMG expects...

Q: Did Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson find over $500 billion in accounting errors while auditing HUD’s financial statements?A: No. The errors were discovered and published by HUD’s independent inspector general before Carson became secretary.FULL QUESTION Is it true that Dr. Ben Carson has found a half trillion dollar error from the Obama administration since he has taken office?FULL ANSWER Readers have repeatedly asked us if Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson initiated an audit of HUD’s financial statements and found more than $500 billion in accounting errors made by the Obama administration.That may be...

Companies, if granted the leeway, will surely present their financial results in the best possible light. And of course they will try to persuade investors that the calculations they prefer, in which certain costs are excluded, best represent the reality in their operations. Call it accentuating the positive, accounting-style. What’s surprising, though, is how willing regulators have been to allow the proliferation of phony-baloney financial reports and how keenly investors have embraced them. As a result, major public companies reporting results that are not based on generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, has grown from a modest problem into a...

While Carly Fiorina has unquestionable debate skills, the more I research her background, the more troubled I become. While it's clear that she is -- politically speaking -- somewhere to the left of Jeb Bush on policy, it is her business record that is most alarming. Let me start with a little history lesson and a company called Lernout & Houspie. Founded in 1987 by two Belgians, L&H went public in 1995 on NASDAQ and operated from U.S. headquarters in Burlington, MA. Specializing in voice recognition software, L&H rode the tech boom to a peak market valuation of $10 billion....

While Abenomics has been an unmitigated disaster for Japan's ordinary population, where the soaring stock market has benefited the top decile of the population while everyone has been slammed by a record 25 consecutive months of declining real wages and soaring input costs, there had been one bright spot: corporate earnings, which unlike in Europe or even the US, have been growing at a steady double-digit clip. What was surprising is that Japan was perhaps the one place where currency debasement was leading to an immediate flow through to rising EPS.Then on Friday, a report out of Reuters caught...

Questions about 401Ks.