Report: $8.5 Trillion Missing From Pentagon Budget

8.5 trillion? And they don't have 1 camera that got a shot of the plane hitting it??

How does hat make sense to anyone?

originally posted by: Greathouse
a reply to: Cuervo

Christ I would bet they're pouring billions of dollars yearly into programs we can't even dream of .

Interstellar craft ain't cheap, and they used to be "missing and presumed lost" all the time. Building more took lots o' bucks.

It ought to be a bit less expensive now, though. You don't lose nearly as many these days.

Well Building CERN wasn't cheap...
2nd


Better spent on stopping Fukushima

a reply to: Bedlam

It does cost more than that. But they make it up with Heroin and Cocaine sales .

originally posted by: buster2010
Expect another "terrorist" attack in the accounting dept at the Pentagon. It already worked once so why not again.

They have the Freedom Act to justify too.

originally posted by: alienjuggalo
8.5 trillion? And they don't have 1 camera that got a shot of the plane hitting it??

How does hat make sense to anyone?

They have plenty, one or two videos have even been smuggled out. Almost all of it was instantly confiscated and hasn't seen the light of day though.

From Metabunk

Does this mean $8.5 trillion was lost? No, the $8.5 trillion is the entire pentagon budget from 1996 to 2012. That's the entire budget for 16 years, because the baseline budget is "only" about $0.5 billion a year.

They did not lose the money. They spent the money. They even accounted for the money. They simply did not account for every single transaction in enough detail to satisfy the requirements for a full audit.

This is not to say everything is fine. It's not. There's a vast amount of waste, and quite possibly a vast amount of pork and fraud, likely totally billions over the 16 year period. But the suggestion that $8.5 trillion is missing is ludicrous - again, that's all the money the Pentagon (which is about half the budget of the DoD) has spent over those 16 years

Hmmm

So, what you are saying is that 7 billion humans just lost $1214 dollars each.

And that's just in crap we know about.

Awesome.............work, buy, consume, die

a reply to: sirChill

A fiat currency system is fine if those running the show are pretty much honest and the currency is based on something tangible not just printed out of thin air. With no backing to anchor the currency in reality it can, which it has now, become a Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme which can still operate smoothly until too many investors want their money back, or in the cash of the USD, foreign countries get sick and tired of the print and buy. Then then can take steps to not only change the game in their favor but to crash the USD and many have been working on exactly this for many years now. Soon it will all change as it always does when greed rules over the system and those in charge are far to corrupt to keep it all together.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Maybe they have the same book keepers as brussells , they have not been able to balance the books since day one .

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Blackmarketeer

This is what happens when every project has different accounting software and none of it talks to anything else. You have to go through by hand and account for everything spent, which would take at least twice as long as it took to spend.

I agree...money keeps getting cut for updated computers and software, and also cut from the auditing budget...so, this will keep happening. it's like they almost want to siphon off taxpayer money for politicians that have investments in military contractor companies...nah...that would be illegal and self-serving

a reply to: Zaphod58

Not only do they have to account for everything spent, but the administrative burden on the Admin Contracting Officers would be immense. Despite the fact that the DoD has whole agencies devoted to just administering / closing out contracts, you have to wonder with that amount of taxpayer dollars being spent, when contracts are closed out, how much if at all unused obligation is returned to the treasury?

These issues are overlooked by a lot of folks when they criticize all fed employees as wasteful. It is the massive amounts of contracts being awarded without oversight (esp. in war zones) and lack of coordinated systems for contract administration that makes room for waste.

I have over 40 passwords for different systems I have to use at work each day. All of those systems were contracted out to different vendors. That is just one part of one agency. To picture the scope of the same issue applied to the DoD is kind of mind boggling...

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Oh it's not missing..

They could tell you where it went.

But then they'd have to shoot you.

a reply to: SonOfThor

Every so often someone tries to fix it. They usually end up with a nice round room and a pretty white coat within a week or two.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Government financial infrastructure is like a labrynth, built by the Minotaur himself...

a reply to: Gh0stwalker

I'd rather face the minotaur. I'd stand a better chance than trying to straighten out government accounting.

Black Projects and possibly "off world" projects.

Duh

originally posted by: Cuervo

originally posted by: Greathouse
That's not bad for 20 years worth of black projects . I would honestly expect more .

I wouldn't mind us missing 8 trillion dollars to black projects if that meant we had our own interstellar travel and a sweet colonized planet but... we still can't feed people for some reason. 8 trillion? Holy crap.

If you were to go back in time only ONE trillion seconds ago, it would be almost 30,000 BC. Meaning, if a person born in 30,000 BC were immortal and received a dollar every second, today, they wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the amount that's missing right now.

People can't wrap their heads around a trillion and I think that's what they count on. If we truly understood what a trillion was...

Best visual explanation is to use to bottles of water.
one thousand = 1000 units = 1 litre bottle,
one million = 1000,000 units = a cargo box of bottles packed 10x10x10
one billion = 1000,000,000 = a container full of boxes packed 10x10x10
one trillion = 1000,000,000,000 = a shipyard of containers packed 10x10x10

a reply to: CharlieSpeirs

And that's only if you don't say the entire words (e.g. "Seven billion, one hundred five million, five hundred and six thousand, four hundred ninety six." "Seven billion, one hundred five million, five hundred and six thousand, four hundred ninety seven.")

I actually did the math for a chapter in a book I was writing about a young girl who wanted to know how far a thousand steps would take her.... how far she could get. She had to stop to name the number with each step, and wound up being wayyyy late to her home, well after dark.

a reply to: babybunnies

Uh, yeah. The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, is going to store its financial data in New York City. Please tell me you do not vote.