{"id":23427,"date":"2017-12-17T20:15:34","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T02:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/?p=23427"},"modified":"2018-11-09T21:09:28","modified_gmt":"2018-11-10T03:09:28","slug":"government-agencies-cannot-account-for-21-trillion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/2017\/12\/government-agencies-cannot-account-for-21-trillion.html","title":{"rendered":"Two US Government Agencies “Cannot Account” for $21 TRILLION Spent in Only 17 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than two weeks after the Department of Defense <\/span>announced<\/span><\/a> it would finally subject itself to a <\/span>first-ever<\/span><\/a> audit, a <\/span>new report<\/span><\/a> puts into perspective precisely <\/span>why<\/span><\/i> the Pentagon so sorely needs a thorough analysis of where its <\/span>trillions<\/span><\/i> upon <\/span>trillions<\/span><\/i> in taxpayer funds have gone \u2014 because a stupefying <\/span>$21 trillion<\/b> cannot be accounted for<\/span><\/i> by just two government agencies, including the gargantuan DoD.<\/span><\/p>\n

That sum is indeed $21 <\/span>trillion<\/span><\/i> \u2014 tens of <\/span>trillions<\/span><\/i> of dollars \u2014 spent by the DoD and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on \u2026 well, no one<\/em> really knows what. <\/span><\/p>\n

Not just that, but this rather bewildering amount slipped through cracks in only seventeen years \u2014 from 1998, the year legislation passed mandating annual audits of every government agency, through 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michigan State University Professor of Economics Mark Skidmore, who specializes in public finance, <\/span>authored<\/span><\/a> the study, which became his brainchild after hearing Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, remark on a report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) revealing no less than $6.5 trillion unaccounted for, but spent, by the DoD.<\/span><\/p>\n

Skidmore, flabbergasted, had presumed from experience with previous public financing matters the astronomical figure too high <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> to be a mistake.<\/span><\/p>

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