While the United states Armed Forces (private mercenaries) are in Afghanistan and the Philippines defending “all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world,” Republican (fascist/socialist) President de facto President George W. Bush (having received an unlawful advantage of 52 ineligible Electoral votes) signs the Sarbanes-Oxley Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, ostensibly designed to boost investor confidence in securities markets that have been plagued by malfeasance.   Among the act’s features are

• tougher Federal statutes against the accounting abuses, such as the shredding of documents or other obstructive practices;
• increased powers for the Securities and Exchange Commission; and
• a permanent task force to investigate and prosecute corporate fraud.  Bush promises the act will “deter and punish corporate and accounting fraud and corruption, ensure justice for wrongdoers, and protect the interests of workers and shareholders.”

       NOTE: As President, Bush presided over one of the most corrupt, deceptive, actuarially unsound investment schemes in history—the Social Security system—which is not a true investment, and at the time never more than three days away from insolvency.  If an annuity, a worker’s pension fund, or a mutual fund managing individual retirement accounts, ran its investments in the same manner as the Social Security Trust Fund, its managers and officers would find themselves in court for civil and criminal penalties.  CONgress itself is equally to blame for underreporting the national debt as consisting entirely of the 3,500,000,000,000 “dollars” in publicly held Treasury Bills and Notes, and Savings Bonds.  This is literally the tip of an iceberg (90%) of which is always submerged, as the national debt not only includes the publicly held debt, but also the 12,900,000,000,000 “dollars” in unfunded us obligations, and the 16,900,000,000,000 “dollars” unfunded Medicare obligations; combined with another 1,700,000,000,000 “dollars” in miscellaneous obligations such as intragovernmental debt, potential lawsuit awards, et cetera brings the total national debt to around 35,000,000,000,000 “dollars.”  Divided by the current population of the United States, this is 120,000 “dollars” for every man, woman and child in the nation.  In 2001, the General Accounting Office reported 17,300,000,000 “dollars” in “unreconciled transactions,” that is funds that could not be accounted for.

       [restored 11/19/2023] Thanks to Dave Seely for his contributions to this entry.