In the meantime, having gone to Wordsmith’s and read his Friday post, I decided I absolutely must replicate the video here with some additional comments and notations. And I may leave this post up for an extra day or two, so as many readers as possible understand:
Your federal government cannot account for $9 trillion of your taxpayer dollars, and it apparently couldn’t care less.
First, watch the video:
Then, from the article:
The Federal Reserve apparently can’t account for $9 trillion in off-balance sheet transactions.
When Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Orlando) asked Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman of the Federal Reserve some very basic questions about where the trillions of dollars that have come from the Fed’s expanded balance sheet, the IG didn’t know.
Worse, nobody at the Fed seems to have any idea what the losses on its $2 trillion portfolio really are.
After viewing the video, do you possess any inclination to think that the IG for the Federal Reserve seems to much care, or is much motivated?
How about this for a motivation: I’d recommend a nice, cold, miniscule JAIL CELL for this incompetent.
And I have another series of recommendations:
It is far PAST time to track white collar crime and then chip up the penalties to persons responsible for public and private losses.
You may not know it, but all law enforcement agencies are mandated by federal law to track and classify crimes so that the FBI can complile and disseminate crime trends and statistics for the nation. Sadly, white collar crimes are NOT a mandated federal tracking point. They NEED to be.
Further, there absolutely must be stratospherically-higher penalties for white collar crimes.
I recommend that prison sentences up to and including LWOP (life without parole) and DEATH be federally instituted and based upon the dollar amount of losses suffered by injured parties and/or victims, on a predetermined sliding scale.
For example, Kenneth Lay of Enron should have had his penalty be death, for the staggering monetary losses he forced uninvolved parties to suffer in their retirement funds and otherwise. At MINIMUM his penalty should have been LWOP in Leavenworth or the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) — otherwise known as Colorado’s Supermax. No “Club Fed.” Mostly like any given federal prison more aligned with a possible “Club Ass-ream” under the tab of “be my white bitch.” Michael Milken, junk bond king, should have suffered the same fate.
These penalties would also, of course, attach not just to private firms and persons but government appointees and administrators as well.
Like, say, the completely clueless, incompetent, uncaring, uninterested, unmotivated “Inspector General” Elizabeth Coleman of the Federal Reserve.
How can you not know or not care where or how $9 TRILLION taxpayers dollars are and disappeared? This is, clearly, negligence beyond negligence.
BZ
I felt the same way about the billions of dollars and millions of dollars in weapons that went missing in Iraq.
In that case these dollars and weapons may have gone to our enemies, no outrage there.
As for your post, I agree this is an outrage but I have no control over it so I don’t let it get to me.
Just another day in Washington.
Ranando: dude, I love you to death, but I happen to know you’re insulated by cash. It allows you to take a stance and enjoy vacations and diversions that the rest of us don’t encounter. I’m not quite so insulated; daily events affect me either positively or negatively. I wish I could embrace your lifestyle and have a little of it for myself. Life, for me, just isn’t going that way.
I say: God bless you for your insulation. May you and your wife and family only prosper and be enriched, and not suffer in the slightest.
Just please understand that, perhaps, me and a few other people don’t have that ability. I hitched my ship up to a local government job and then gave it the best 30 years of my life.
Now, at 60, I’m facing a removal of my retirement, my diminution in seniority, a tier reduction, top step removal, at the worst possible time. I’m not 23 anymore. I can’t just step up and take any job. I lawfully could retire tomorrow — and then lose whatever benefits I’ve worked long and hard to accumulate.
Everyone knows: private business is high-risk/high gain. There are bonuses to be earned for performance.
I came from a gov family and chose slow and steady. I gave up bonuses and rewards in exchange for some semblance of solidarity and consistency.
Just please understand that Life isn’t an ignorable Bowl of Cherries at this point.
BZ
Well BZ:
I’ve been bitching about this for a while now. It is totally true. Not only do they NOT care about where the money went, they are doing everything possible to bleed American families to death. The new smoking bill is bullcrap and it seems like everything this administration is doing is geared towards making us a broke nation and that bothers me to the core.
Mahndisa:
And how could this administration NOT see that EVERYTHING it wants requires billions and billions MORE dollars than it takes in?
Our last truly balanced budget was way back in 1969. Since then, our debt has ALWAYS outstripped our revenue.
How long can we continue to print money we don’t have and remain the slightest bit VIABLE on the global screen??
BZ
BZ,
I do understand my friend and I have many good friends dealing with what you are and I’m truly sorry.
My point was that these assholes are going to do what they do. This is not a Democrat or Republican issue, this has been going on since the beginning of the USA.
They simply don’t care.
Who knows if this money went into as dangerous hands as those weapons that were missing in Iraq?
What a post, BZ…how can it not make everyone angry? man
I think she knows exactly where it went and she doesn’t want us to know lest we get a little upset.
I found it very interesting how this dimwit IG tried to evade the question, BZ. That video made me more than a bit angry, it made me furious! I think there are many people out there who don’t even realize how much money $9 trillion is.
I also agree that we are far too soft on white collar crimes. I doubt if any person found guilty of a white collar crime, regardless of the amount of money stolen or the amount of people ruined, will ever get the death penalty, but I think life without parole in a real jail a viable option.
Personally, I’d like to beat the snot out of this particular IG!
Until we elevate the penalties for white collar crimes in a massive fashion, until we begin to hold executives both public and private responsible for their fiscal behavior, this will continue unabated.
All of these people are beyond Tone Deaf. They really are NOT beginning to realize the public is finally starting to become unsettled. And the LAST thing you want to do is kill your cash cow, the American Public — because it is the American Public that pays for, essentially, MOST EVERYTHING on this planet, in every country.
BZ
Ask Bush!
Anony: ask him what? His phone number? His birthday?
BZ
Just imagine all the money that will disappear unaccounted for with a national healthcare plan!
The idiot IG in the video is obviously stonewalling and, well, oblivious to the issue at hand. This study, that study; this investigation, that investigation — all of which cost even MORE money.
Unfrickinbelievable. Watching videos like that leaves you feeling a little hopeless.
Lord how I hate bureaucrats.
Pitchforks and Torches Time!!!
(Sorry I have been AWOL, Pollock “B” Season just began and Dutch Harbor is HOPPING)
The Debt Star arrives.
The talking points against public health care would make a lot more sense if the VA and Medicare patients didn’t have much lower health care costs per patient that any of the privately insured comparators. The VA is constantly being smeared, but the quality of care indicators actually compare favorably to private options. This in spite of the fact that their patient population is much sicker than the general population.
Private insurance companies are loaded up with bureacrats whose job it is to run up their company’s profits at patient expense, by denying reimbursement whenever possible, and by striking high risk patients from their insurance rolls whenever possible. What we have currently are high costs, health care rationing (if you can’t afford it, or your insurance won’t cover it, you don’t get it), and relatively low quality health care compared to most other First World countries.
For all the bally hoo about lawyers and tort reform, malpractice concerns contribute only a few percent to costs. The biggest driver for high costs is the profit motive. Doctors and medical groups make greater profits when they order more tests and perform more procedures. As a result, there is a strong incentive to over-treat patients with expensive tests and unnecessary surgical procedures.
Because so many of us get our medical insurance from our employers, many of us are just a layoff and a major illness or injury away from bankruptcy.
When a patient goes into a hospital, the physicians and staff are all made aware of what kind of insurance the patient has. The better the insurance, the more care they get. Rationing, in other words.
There’s a lot to be said for the free market, and government is not the solution to everything. But there are no free-market forces in medical care that drive costs down. There are only incentives that drive costs up. This is a case where private companies are screwing consumers when they are at their weakest, and there is nothing in place to stop it.
The current private insurance based system is so expensive, and so bad that even a poorly run public program would be a big improvement.