Year after year, auditors studying the financial records of federal government departments find many of them so disorganized, even chaotic, that the agencies cannot account for tens of billions of dollars. What is more, when many agencies realize that they have made major accounting errors, rather than looking back to see where the money went, they simply enter multibillion-dollar balance adjustments, writing off the money. That is just one of many problems that auditors typically find in annual financial statements of government agencies. The 2001-2002 fiscal year ended Sept. 30, so government agencies are preparing statements now. In the last...
