FEDS: Accounting, accountability lacking

Exposure of the mostly unrecognized and carefully guarded existence of a financial accounting and accountability system which is murky, muddy and corrupt, resulting in the current devastating effects, was the intent of a recent letter to The Press. A call for proof of financial misdeeds seems out of place and nugatory. But here are the facts:

Enron, Madoff, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Ernst & Young, $800,000 salaries of local "representatives," are only some such events that were reported by government agencies. How many hundreds or thousands of equally dishonest cases are not in the news? If this is not enough proof, will the trillion dollars of people's tax money to cover up these financial misdeeds do it? What does it take to convince some people to admit there is something foul here? Awareness of this foulness was the letter's main purpose. All these examples are the direct result of shoddy accounting and accountability. Hopefully awareness will engender actions with the goal of true financial transparency.

Among the above letter's other points was also the suggestion to establish complete separation between lobbyists and governmental people. The present praxis of intimacy creates a heavily biased relationship, which is contrary to common sense and contrary to this country's overall interests. Useful information provided by each lobbying party can be made available through a neutralizing central server.

Of course, quite a number of entities enjoy and profiteer quite nicely from all this confusion. So, as said earlier, improvements do not happen automatically, only when enough aware and altruistic-minded people unite and work for them can we hope to exit from this morass.

GUNTER MILOW

Coeur d'Alene