De Dollar Hegemonie 41

'$53 TRILLION AND GROWINGby
James Turk
Founder, GoldMoney.com

“We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant's books, so that every member of Congress and every man of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them.” – President Thomas Jefferson to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, 1802

Unfortunately President Jefferson’s hope has not been realized. Instead of striving for accuracy and honest reporting, the accounts of the US government have been plagued by all sorts of abuses perpetrated by politicians for decades. Any reasonable person viewing these accounts can only conclude that they have been prepared to obfuscate rather than enlighten, to mislead rather than inform.
For example, the government reports that its deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007 was $162.8 billion. In other words, expenses exceeded revenue by this amount. This shortfall of course needs to be made up by borrowing, which the report itself acknowledges by saying: “The Government borrows from the public to finance the gap between expenditures and revenues”. But a little digging into the numbers reveals that the government is borrowing far more than its reported deficit. Total federal debt during the past fiscal year actually grew from $8,530.4 billion in 2006 to $9,030.6 billion in 2007, which is a $500.2 billion increase – or more than three-times the reported deficit.
Why the big difference between the growth in debt and the annual deficit? It seems reasonably clear that the accounts were prepared and are being reported to the public to make the financial picture of the US government look better than it really is. And believe me, after reading the recently released Fiscal Year 2007 Financial Report of the United States Government, there is every reason to believe that the US government financial position is even worse than we think. The full report can be downloaded from this link: http://www.gao.gov/financial/fy2007financialreport.html
It has only been a little more than a decade ago that the US government started preparing its accounts according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The Secretary of the Treasury, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, is required to submit financial statements for the U.S. government to the President and the Congress each year. The Government Accounting Office is required to audit these statements, but to give you an indication of the slipshod way things are done by the government, its financial statements have never received an unqualified opinion.
Here are some quotes from the 2007 Financial Report to highlight just how dire the US government’s financial condition really is. Let’s start with some comments by the Comptroller General of the United States:

Lees verder: http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/turk/2008/0109.html