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From the article: > At first glance adjustments totaling trillions may seem impossible. The amounts dwarf the > Defense Department’s entire budget. Making
by stock_toaster 10y ago
From the article:
> At first glance adjustments totaling trillions may seem impossible. The amounts dwarf the
> Defense Department’s entire budget. Making changes to one account also require making
> changes to multiple levels of sub-accounts, however. That created a domino effect where,
> essentially, falsifications kept falling down the line. In many instances this daisy-chain
> was repeated multiple times for the same accounting item.
- guimarin 10y agobingo, this is an asinine way to do bookkeeping. And reuters shouldn't report based on this kind of waterfall problem. The issue is we're off by ~65B which is over 10% of the budget. That's the scandal someone is misdirecting away from. I want to change the parent to, I get you want to clickbait but seriously??
- gizmo 10y agoI think reuters' description is accurate. If you do your accounting in such a way that all numbers are garbage but the errors mostly cancel each other out it's not a matter of being unable to account for 10% of the budget, it's a matter of not being able to trust any numbers at all. This is deep institutional rot.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]