CAFR expert’s brilliant 400 words on US debt: government hides abundance as future liabilities, ‘retirement’ accounts, buying ‘debt’ from each other

Posted on October 24, 2015 by Carl Herman

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/cafr-experts-brilliant-400-words-on-us-debt-government-hides-abundance-as-future-liabilities-retirement-accounts-buying-debt-from-each-other.html

Walter Burien is the leading expert on Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs). Beginning in 1990, Walter began documenting how governments manipulate their books to hide public money, but reveal part of what they do in CAFRs. I discovered Walter’s work in 2012, read CAFRs for the state of California, the City of Los Angeles, and Los Angeles County, and verified his information as correct. Idocument those CAFRs’ information here, along with the adventure of my California Assemblyperson and State Senator’s obfuscations and eventual official statements of, “No comment” when asked to verify what I found in the state CAFR. My 23-minute interview to explain my findings is the last video of this article. I found similar fraud in San Jose’s CAFR in 2015.

The bottom-line is that we live in the Orwellian economy of a debt-based “money” system, while government lords over trillions of our captured dollars with .01% oligarchs hiding ~$30 trillion in tax havens (that’s about 20-30 times the total to end all poverty on Earth forever). A leading CAFR example is California’s ~14,000 various government entities’ CAFRs have a sampled-data total estimate of $8 trillion in surplus taxpayer assets ($650,000 non-disclosed assets per household). CAFR so-called “retirement funds” currently deliver net returns of about one percent on good years, and negative returns on bad years (here, here).

Better read the above paragraph twice to feel our real economic condition exposed through official CAFRs.

I consider Walter an American hero for intellectual integrity and moral courage to report CAFR data since 1990. He has suffered tremendous repercussions from .01% criminal financial interests he exposes. When true accounting is done, we all owe Walter trillions worth of gratitude.

Walter responded to my article, ‘Developed’ nations now $50 TRILLION in debt; literally, figuratively bankrupt for infrastructure, public services with the following brilliant 400 words:

“Please, please, please understand the following:

If you were married to a Super Model who was gorgeous, and everyone kept telling you she was fat and ugly, after a while would you doubt yourself to think that she is fat and ugly?

Per that debt, the following three points apply:

1. Enron promoted their profit and hid their debt. Government does the exact opposite: they promote debt and hide profit.
2. With the changes in government accounting over the last 15 years, now they project out “liabilities” 35 years cross-matched with 1 year of income. If Bill Gates, you, or I did the same, we all would look like we are on death’s financial door.
3. Government back during the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s had so much cash coming in the door they did not know what to do with it all. So, the scheme went into effect of promoting debt, and then funding that debt with their own cash: turning cash into debt as an investment for them, and as a “parking zone” for that cash. Well, today if you start cross-matching that local and federal government debt with the investor of that debt, after connecting the dots, you will find that 65% + of that debt is “self-funded” or cross-matched with other local or federal investment funds. You may have the county funding the city debt, and the same city funding the county debt. The enterprise operation owned by the city may be funding the city debt, a local government may have 500 million invested with a bank, brokerage, or insurance company, and that institution is now funding 500 million of that same local government’s debt. A state may have massive investment capital in China, and now the same state will have the investment manager in China fund the state’s new bond issue which makes the funding “look” like it is coming from China, and so on, and so on, and so on.

The public was played as useful idiots per this scheme with the one side of the coin promoted of the debt. The public is now convinced that their gorgeous model wife is fat and ugly, when in fact she is just as gorgeous as ever and even more so. If government debt was cross-matched with government investments, and then offset against each other, you may just have 80% of that “government debt” evaporate with the stroke of a pen. Please don’t get caught into promoting the useful idiot line of government debt…

Please share my comments with anyone you know who is currently “promoting” the one-sided view of the coin per government debt, and share with whomever else you think needs to know the points brought forward above.

Yours Truly,
Walter Burien – CAFR1.com
P. O. Box 2112
Saint Johns, AZ 85936

Tel. (928) 458-5854″

Thrive’s (documentary with 32 million views) founder Foster Gamble’s 7-minute explanation on Walter’s work with CAFRs:

Walter’s 2011 72-minute full documentary on CAFR:

My 2012 23-minute interview on Alex Jones’ Infowars news on CAFRs:

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Note: I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History, with all economics factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008 among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences. I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.

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Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu

Note: Examiner.com has blocked public access to my articles on their site (and from other whistleblowers), so some links in my previous work are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go to http://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive. I’ll update as “hobby time” allows; including my earliest work from 2009 to 2011 (blocked author pages: here, here).