Fraudsters eye huge stimulus pie ... as much as $50 billion!, page 1

First the article:

Swindlers, con men, and thieves could siphon off as much as $50 billion of the government's planned stimulus package as the money begins flooding the economy in coming months, according to David Williams, who runs Deloitte Financial Services Advisory and counsels clients on fraud prevention.

Williams predicted that about $500 billion of the total $787 billion stimulus would be channeled into the traditional procurement network for government contracts, while the rest will be spent directly by the government or outside the corporate network.

"The rule of thumb typically is that of the about $500 billion worth of money that's going to run through the procurement process, somewhere between 5% and 10% of that usually finds it way into potential problems," marketwatch

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Having worked as a property developer, I can confirm that at the very least 5% - 10% of any construction project goes to waste/theft/kickbacks/etc.

At the levels of coin involved in the stimulus package that percentage, in real terms, becomes astronomical.

President Obama's response:

"We're going to do it continuing to operate in a transparent fashion so that taxpayers know this money is not being wasted on a bunch of boondoggles."

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

I had to look that word up.

What the hell right, we'll just print some more I guess.

But this is in fact no different than all the money wasted, well handed out, to no bid contracts and friends of the show over at the Bush admin.

Same old government just different beneficiaries.

Maybe that's what they meant when they were complaining about redistribution of wealth.