I'd like to see the US government and the President's cabinet set up more as a business, instead of this smoke and mirrors stuff.
It collects trillions of taxpayer dollars, and it should manage and spend them wisely. It should have an audited income statement and balance sheet based on GAAP just like any other business. And it for sure should have a cabinet-level CTO and CFO, similar in stature to the NSA.
We're going to be spending hundreds of billions in the next few years on infrastructure, including tech. And we'll be investing trillions to bail ourselves out of the housing crash and debt crisis. This is the time to get it right. Getting it wrong, Bush-Paulson-Greenspan-Bernanke wrong, could be fatal.
For CTO I like Eric Schmidt from Google, or maybe Bill Gates. For CFO of course it's Warren Buffet, but failing that David Walker would be perfect.
Have at it.
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16 comments:
Hey Keef,
Is it cool to be smart again? Can us lowly PhDs venture out into public now with all our crazy talk about facts and reproducible experiments?
Not sure we are ready yet for a tech tsar. You see, there has been RAMPANT SCIENTIFIC INFLATION over the last 8 years too. Our ability to solve important problems has been totally gutted. Funding agencies dont want to be told that its hard work to do the splashy flashy things they love to hype and advertise.
Our national labs are potempkin villages full of H1B holders just waiting to default on their mcmansions and go back to China and India. Just wait until the big O makes the call for a Manhantten project for energy. Guess what, you can't just throw money at something like that and hope for a result. Not after Bush and congress have fucked the national labs and NSF for so long.
We will not be spending hundreds of billion on infrastructure Keith.
Amerika is going the way of zimbabwe.
We will be lucky to avoid radiating ourselves in the process.
Really Keith - you are dreaming.
You have to take into account public accounting vs private or GAAP accounting. Private accounting is based on minimizing expenses so as to increase profit while public accounting seems to be based on maximizing expenses so as to avoid having ones budget trimmed.
The key component of bureaucracy is public accounting. Change it and you change EVERYTHING in my opinion. THIS is real change. I don't see how you can not run a business model like your propose (or any real model of efficiency) based on public accounting; unless of course you are employing people who are motivated to eradicate their own positions. When could a bureaucrat at any level be expected to do that (or even consider the big picture)? They think in terms of kingdoms not organiztion. They define progress as adding to their kingdoms arsenal.
I am amazed at how little attention we pay to bureaucracy and how we just accept it as an unchangeable paradigm.
Soot and Ashes.
Accurate. You're a little ahead of the game.
Us HPers (sorry, the old moniker will take time to fade away), are going to have to help Obama explain our crashing economy to MSM and all the other clueless folks.
One thing's for sure, few will be distracted.
The rot in America is wide and deep. Too deep.
Mix that with the notion of previous investment and it means that most of our institutions are going to fight any kind of meaningful change.
Think REIC. Think Lawrence Yun. Now apply that to just about every institution in America, and you see what Obama is up against.
Folks, we've got a lot of work to do.
Last point. While institutions aren't ready for change, most people are. Look for Obama to shake up the way government does business. Instead of mandates (i.e. No Child Left Behind), we'll probably see more guidelines with funding going in that direction. They'll be lots of emphasis on defining the role and responsibilities of government, the private sector and individuals.
Look for Obama to fund the stuff that the private sector won't, can't or shouldn't fund (contracts for private armies-see Blackwater), and then aggressively encourage the private sector to pursue the rest. I think he will fight for transparency in govt. and the private sector. A major battle coming from the financial sector and the REIC on that one.
There is a GAAP budget for the US government. And its audited by the GAO, which says that the government fails to follow most financial reporting laws (shock!). Also, the government has a net worth of something like -53 trillion dollars.
A little lite reading for you:
http://fms.treas.gov/fr/index.html
redundancies!!
shrink it first.
No, They have this mess instead.
http://tinyurl.com/57ue47
CTO: John McCain (he needs a new job)
CFO: George W. Bush, foremerly of the White (out) house.
What a pair of WINNERS!
how about Greenspan? he must be getting bored on rubber chicken circuit and playing his clarinet
The government should not be run like a business, Enron for instance.
Wow, you really are a great thinker aren't you Kweefer. Yeah, what we need is more central planning in the USSA.
Give it a rest buddy.
consultant said..
Look for Obama to fund the stuff that the private sector won't, can't or shouldn't fund (contracts for private armies-see Blackwater), and then aggressively encourage the private sector to pursue the rest.
>>>>Hmmmmmm
Anonymous said...
Also, the government has a net worth of something like -53 trillion dollars.
>>>>Hmmmmmm
So, as the CA Proposition 8 people take to the streets to protest gay marriage, The California Pension Fund has lost 20% in the last 90 days.
>>>>Hmmmm
This would mean that hysterical, homophobes with crumbling pensions are protesting gay marriage as their pensions go "poof".
I believe that rebuilding America will have to begin with a few personal finance courses. Perhaps we could start with: Don't worry about who your neighbor is marrying when you have no money to eat.
CTO...
Probably someone from the Seattle Bubble Blog.
CFO...
A council of bubble bloggers.
Bad idea. I once thought like that too.
Before Bush, I thought a CEO president would have the perfect crudentials. I never was for Bush, but it showed how a govt and a business are very different animals. Any CEO would make a terrible president.
And any gov't organized on a corporate model would be a disaster.
So empiricalism, positivism and the like is all the range now? After just now climbing out of the attic I have been hiding in over the last 8 years I feel I can speak up and out again..
Well, GAAP balance sheets are called "BS" for a reason, but I like the rest of it :)
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