Why so silent on the huge elephant in the room?

[Harvey]

Wombat, for what it's worth I think you've been magnanimously accommodating on this thread among many others. Moderation is an under appreciated art and you're one of the best RI has had in my memory. Wanted you to know that your persistence, intelligence, knowledge, fairness and equability is noticed.



Edit: And your wit

[divideandconquer]

If you truly believe the governments are above using sketchy accounting, above concealing their wealth, which seems to be the consensus at RI and everywhere else, nothing I post will convince you or anyone else, otherwise. I have to admit, if this were real face-to face life, I would've given up long ago, but somehow the "anonymity" of the Internet fosters a type of insanity that makes me post on elephants that should remain invisible, and then continue wasting everyone's time by responding as if it will convince someone...anyone, other than myself.



P.S. Don't mind me...I clearly see things that are not there.

[backtoiam]

If you truly believe the governments are above using sketchy accounting, above concealing their wealth, which seems to be the consensus at RI and everywhere else, nothing I post will convince you or anyone else,

I have no problem with the sketchy accounting angle in the big charade game. The whole system has evolved into one huge "art form" of hide the ball sketch game. A lot of these "investment firms" governments use are huge back doors. Through shell companies and subsidiaries, independent contractors, and other affiliated entities, trails are created for the specific task of masking the people that benefit the most from the veil created by the trails. It is not a rare event that administrators of townships, that do not have nearly as much flexibility and power to set up a maze of shell companies without it being noticed, are discovered to have seemingly endless numbers of clever schemes to pull public money toward their own benefit. When people at the Federal level like Cheney and Halliburton are considered, as well as the endless flow of sketch money going into the pockets of his government peers that help him hide and maintain his sketch empire are considered, I have no problem considering the possibilities in the trails that may be laid into the CAFR punchbowl.

nothing I post will convince you or anyone else,

I learned a lot from the videos you posted. Its a long haul to watch it all, which probably deters many from viewing it, but there is a lot of information there that gives food for thought about a myriad of possibilities in the art of laying masked trails.

Thank you for the time you spent providing the information.

[jingofever]

If you truly believe the governments are above using sketchy accounting, above concealing their wealth, which seems to be the consensus at RI and everywhere else, nothing I post will convince you or anyone else, otherwise.

I did not say that governments are above using sketchy accounting, I said that CAFRs do not demonstrate it and I do not think you have provided a convincing reason for why a government would want to conceal its wealth.

[DrEvil]

A simple way to find CAFR reports minus all the dross:

Google site:*.gov cafr

site: means search on the following website only
*.gov means any website that ends with .gov. The asterisk works like a wildcard.

If you make it filetype:pdf site:*.gov cafr it will narrow it down to pdf's only, and for rainy days it's always fun to search filetype:pdf site:*.mil

Google also indexes tons of other filetypes: https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... 5287?hl=en

[BrandonD]

A simple way to find CAFR reports minus all the dross:

Google site:*.gov cafr

site: means search on the following website only
*.gov means any website that ends with .gov. The asterisk works like a wildcard.

If you make it filetype:pdf site:*.gov cafr it will narrow it down to pdf's only, and for rainy days it's always fun to search filetype:pdf site:*.mil

Google also indexes tons of other filetypes: https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... 5287?hl=en

Thanks, a very helpful shortcut

[divideandconquer]

If you truly believe the governments are above using sketchy accounting, above concealing their wealth, which seems to be the consensus at RI and everywhere else, nothing I post will convince you or anyone else,

I have no problem with the sketchy accounting angle in the big charade game. The whole system has evolved into one huge "art form" of hide the ball sketch game. A lot of these "investment firms" governments use are huge back doors. Through shell companies and subsidiaries, independent contractors, and other affiliated entities, trails are created for the specific task of masking the people that benefit the most from the veil created by the trails. It is not a rare event that administrators of townships, that do not have nearly as much flexibility and power to set up a maze of shell companies without it being noticed, are discovered to have seemingly endless numbers of clever schemes to pull public money toward their own benefit. When people at the Federal level like Cheney and Halliburton are considered, as well as the endless flow of sketch money going into the pockets of his government peers that help him hide and maintain his sketch empire are considered, I have no problem considering the possibilities in the trails that may be laid into the CAFR punchbowl.

nothing I post will convince you or anyone else,

I learned a lot from the videos you posted. Its a long haul to watch it all, which probably deters many from viewing it, but there is a lot of information there that gives food for thought about a myriad of possibilities in the art of laying masked trails.

Thank you for the time you spent providing the information.

Ahhh...no matter how hard I try, I can't leave ignore this topic! Anyway, thank you for taking the time to consider it. Unfortunately, this issue involves time most people do not have, and effort most people do not want to put forth (understandably) in order to understand. The important thing is understanding, like you said, that "the whole system has evolved into one huge "art form" (legislation and financial reporting are art forms...maybe black art forms, but still art forms) of hide the ball sketch game".

But, despite my tendency to see non-existent pink elephants, it is still my belief that understanding the CAFR helps to answer the question of how this vast system of financial fraud and extortion, built on a foundation of human misery and exploitation, is maintained. And, that's why the CAFR, a spectacular artifice of accounting tricks and sleight of hand (for example, taking current assets and comparing those assets to its future liabilities in other words, while reporting CURRENT ASSETS, hide the true value of today’s assets by subtracting your FUTURE LIABILITIES of tomorrow from your ASSET totals today) is so overwhelming and hard to comprehend.

From the City Of Pacifica Municipal Corporation CAFR:

Due Within One Year:

Governmental Activities: $4,283,958

Business-Type Activities: $2,458,072

Totals: $6,742,030

Due In More Than One Year:

Governmental Activities: $38,527,849

Business-Type Activities: $34,108,234

Totals: $72,636,083

To be fair, we will treat the listed liabilities that are “due within one year” as a legitimate line item, and to cover any type of short-term future assets that this government corporation might have actually reported.

And so, we have a total left over in the “due in more than one year” category of $72,636,083.

When we look at the line items in the “Assets” section, we see no reporting mechanism for the declaration of future assets due in more than one year”. The “long-term pre-paid pension asset” is an investment into the pension system, and not a future asset in the form of revenue. Thus, we have no hint or clue of a reporting on how much this City will collect in future revenue or what will be collected via taxation or business income, which would obviously be what pays for the future debt liability payments that are reported here.

In other words, the City corporation just used FUTURE liabilities to hide its CURRENT assets.

Moreover, who creates the statutes or specific laws that declare, proscribe, command, forbid, direct actions regarding the CAFR? Or who sets forth these mechanisms? Certainly not us, since 99% of the people have never heard of it. For instance, there are no requirements or statutes that address the return of surpluses back to the people. Instead legislatures pass internal statutes, for example, that conveniently mandate a certain percentage to participate in the fund as a separate statute, amongst the already hundreds of thousands of statutes and regulations on the books. What's one more statute if it benefits the lawmakers?

[Wombaticus Rex]

You're right that this is the basis for a horrible system of exploitation, but I think that's mostly because full accrual accounting was imported wholesale from the private sector. I think you'll find the amount of wealth hidden (from stockholders) by executive boards dwarfs the fiefdoms of city bureaucrats, but that's just a hunch and I don't wish the forensic analysis on either of us.

Household level, common sense economics metaphors can fall flat because we don't work with escrow accounts, actuary tables, municipal bonds, etc, but all of us sure as shit do have a General Fund, and I think I can explain this with that.

The abuse of General Funds is generally reported on, like when governors (everywhere, always) take capital from pension funds to cover budget shortfalls, or worse, finance pet programs they couldn't get authorized democratically.

When you, me or Latvia take on debt, we are taking on a set expense that projects into the future beyond the fiscal year. That is why you're seeing "assets get hidden" -- it's not so much a covert conspiracy as the entire point of full accrual accounting, to show the true condition of your enterprise, rather than the current state.

On the household level, the metaphor works: we can lie to ourselves that debt isn't a "real expense" until we hit the next calendar year, but that's still a lie. You're in debt for the entire amount of the capital plus interest; that is your true current financial standing despite the fact you've got a couple hundred left in the bank and another paycheck on the way. Your household enterprise is deep in the red. I'm about to sign a lease, which will put my personal CAFR in the red by about $19,000. That is the true financial standing of my enterprise; fucked.

Now, I'm only truly fucked if I stop working.

Likewise, when you propose that governments can just pay everything off by selling off their assets, that's a temporary solution that will make it about a year before those future liabilities devour everything. That is why I personally need to keep going to work - that is also why the IRS has to keep IRS'ing and the local county Sheriff has to keep issuing those tickets if he wants to pay off his mortgage anytime soon.

None of this affects, or detracts from, your completely accurate point that government tends towards economy-consuming metastasis, just as bureaucracy itself can only survive by expanding. I think your last paragraph nails the fact this is more of a legislative process than it is an accounting trick.

[minime]

above top secret banned my posts on the CAFR.

That's a mighty odd data point. Huh.

Anyways, on a serious note, the only rules on this forum are posted here: http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =36&t=8705

(Helpfully enough, that whole section of the forum is located at the bottom of the sprawl. I don't blame anyone for not knowing.)

I, along with almost anyone else here, welcome discussions about accounting, infrastructure, and the boring details that make global power possible. I fail to understand how CAFR could be a controversial topic, as utterly as I fail to understand how this detail is the most important elephant in the room. It might be illuminating, or at least interesting, to play a parlor game where everyone states what their vote for that category would be.

Offhand, my vote would be a split between Carrying Capacity and Dunbar's Number.

Though I am loath to give it a name, nouns being what they are, I would be inclined to cast my black marble for something like Carrying Capacity. It is all the elephants in all the rooms. Or something. Thank you for that, Wombat.

Dunbar's Number? Meh... That number rarely goes higher than zero, except in theory.