"R" == Rich  <someone@somewhere.com> writes:

R> I only hope that you don't manage your checkbook the same way you
R> want the govt to borrow to pay for your pet projects.

R> As for NASA, it's an illustration of the way these things tend to
R> go.

R> http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/05/16/nasa.finances.reut/index.html

Note that you forgot to include a key paragraph in posting a portion
of this report:

By this reckoning, a $40 billion contract that stretched over nine
years and several separate NASA centers generated $120 billion worth
of entries, and these were turned over to the auditors.

R> $565 billion

R> "The documentation NASA provided in support of its September 30,
R> 2003, financial statements was not adequate to support $565 billion
R> in adjustments to various financial statement accounts," the
R> auditor wrote in a January 20 report to Cobb, NASA's inspector
R> general.

Indeed, even some simple arithmetic would show something funny about
this "$565 billion" number.  As the article states, NASA's current
annual budget is $16 billion.  So it would take about 35 years of NASA
spending, at the current rate, to produce $565 billion.  I suspect
that the auditors simply added up everything that didn't make sense,
without taking into account double-, triple-, or quadruple-counting of
stuff and reported some huge number.

The other question, of course, to ask is whether NASA is unique.
Suppose you did an audit of any large government agency or private
firm?  

R> And you might want to consider that *all* of the new planetary
R> projects Joseph Lazio posted of fall under the rubric of NASA's
R> mismanagement of debt dollars. Wonder where the money's actually
R> going? NASA has no idea.

That's not correct.  Two of the three missions that I posted were
European missions.

-- 
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