BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports

Subject: BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports
From: GUEST,Natural Guest
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 07:28 PM

I thought I posted this here yesterday. Do any of you know about these reports?:

....A CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) is government's complete accounting of "Net Worth". The CAFR was established as local government's complete accounting record starting in 1946 through the efforts of a private group located out of Chicago, IL by the name of Government Financial Officers Association (GFOA) http://gfoa.org and became mandatory by Federal requirement on all local governments in 1978 to complete if they did not all ready do so....

....From the over 84,000 CAFR reports produced by local Government each year in combination with Federal Government's own investment holdings, shows a conservative value of sixty trillion dollars held by Local and Federal Government as of 1999. An example of the holdings shown from just one Government CAFR (NY STATE 2005 RETIREMENT FUND CAFR) shows 133 billion dollars of investments held (Microsoft 44 million shares thereof).

http://cafr1.com/SilenceisGolden.html

Subject: RE: BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports
From: Peace
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 07:33 PM

Then I suggest you stop paying taxes right away.

Subject: RE: BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports
From: Peace
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 07:39 PM

And maybe let Walter J. Burien, Jr., know about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports
From: GUEST,Natural Guest
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 07:43 PM

1. There are over 85,000 local government Incs, each with there own revenue and investments.
a. When looking at each, say Manhattan 1.2 Trillion, NY Throughway 31 billion, NJ
State 384 billion, Orange County 21 billion, we have just listed 4 of the 85,000 and
here is 1.636 trillion. Now think about the other 84,996 local government entities.
Anyone having a problem with conceptualizing totals yet?
b. Local Governments total up to about 44 trillion, Federal to about 16 trillion.
Total: 60 Trillion Dollars
c. Out of that figure government pension funds equal about 28 trillion.
d. Just composite government pension funds generated about 4.3 trillion last year.
e. Total personal income, 1999, from all people in the USA was 8.2 trillion dollars.
SOURCE: Note section of the; Federal Combined Financial Statement
http://www.fms.treas.gov/cfs/index.html
f. Approximate taxation both local and federal, 1999, 3.4 trillion dollars
e. Composite governments "gross income," "all sources," 8.5 trillion dollars.

http://cafr1.com/SIMPL.html

Subject: RE: BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports
From: GUEST,Natural Guest
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 12:29 PM

You're told "the budget" is the total money a govt has access to, but that's not true.   Estimates vary, but a budget is normally between 1/2 to 1/10 of the CAFR total. Anyway, you're shown this fractional amount, and then at the end of the year you're told that the government operated at a surplus or a deficit (closed out under budget or over budget). It's usually a deficit, so your taxes can be raised a percent or two. But the BULK of the money the govt had at its disposal was off the table, in investments, earning interest, etc. And at the end of the year, when your taxes go up, the interest on the off-the-table money is just reinvested along with the principal, all of that done out of the public eye. Unless you look. Note the 1999 surplus for Manhattan mentioned above...1.2 trillion dollars. The "budget" is really just the operating expense for the taxing authority. Various governmental and non-governmental agencies have TRILLIONS of dollars of our money that has simply gone unaccounted-for. We paid it in taxes, overcharges in utility fees, etc., and it was absorbed into the system, then it was funneled into private investment firms. Look up the CAFR for your town or county, or your school district. Use the cafr1.com site or do a google search. If you dig deep enough you'll probably see that your school district has a thousand shares of this or that, part of a ruby mine in Burma, etc., etc., while you're being told to vote Yes so Timmy can have school books next year.

CAFRs began appearing in 1946, so that's 61 years of investing, and re-investing. There is no NEED for Americans to pay taxes anymore, yet people don't know about this scam. But Gorbachev knew. Or he found out about it, and when he realized the TRUE way to achieve tyrannical dominance over citizens is to show them a slice of your true investment fund but convince them it's the whole pie, he knew it beat the hell out of the Soviet model. THAT'S what brought down the Berlin Wall. And now there are CAFRs all over the former Soviet Union.

Anyway, look up the CAFR for your school district, print it out, highlight some of it and go to the next school board meeting and ask why there are bond proposals being discussed. Be sure you get the CAFR, not the AFR...in the past 10 years a lot of agencies have been issuing tarted-up budgets as AFR's, but you want the COMPREHENSIVE report...the true numbers. Look for telltale phrases like "interest from investments." If you live in a dirt-poor county and they're talking about raising taxes, yet they show a 1 million dollar return on interest from investments, then go to a county commissioner's meeting and ask what rate of return they're getting on the county's investments. If it's 3.7%, do the math to figure out what the principal is, then ask why the county is acting so dirt-poor. Really, this stuff is hidden in plain view. Look into it and you'll be shocked. There's no NEED for most counties and cities to raise taxes or even charge what they do. No federal need, no state need. Electrical rates...look at your power company's CAFR. Telephone service and so on. All these governmental agencies and large corporations are running HUGE surpluses they don't ever mention. It's like keeping two sets of books...the REAL set (the CAFR), and the set shown to the taxman (the budget). If YOU kept books like that, it would be a crime.

Subject: RE: BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports
From: artbrooks
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 01:08 PM

That is all very interesting. However, the City of Albuquerque's (where I live) CAFR for FY 2005 shows net assets (assets minus obligations) of $1.3 billion. Of that, about 69% is buildings, land and equipment...that is, everything from the spare tire on a fire engine to the airport. According to the report, $138.3 million is unobligated and available to meet ongoing and future obligations, such as paying salaries, utility bills, paving streets, and so forth. I really can't see much hidden here, and I have reviewed a lot of financial statements.

Subject: RE: BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports
From: GUEST,Natural Guest
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 07:52 PM

I haven't looked at Albuquerque's CAFR (nearly 100,000 of these things in the U.S. now, and I can't even keep up with the ones in my area), but 1.3 billion sounds like under-reporting. Albuquerque's a fairly large town, isn't it? High priced real estate? The city pension funds, etc., are they factored in?

But then Arizona is WAY ahead the rest of the nation on most political matters, so maybe the oversight is good and the numbers are accurate. Maybe the excess (I think of it as a slush fund) has been kept down or redistributed in the form of lower taxes. Sounds low, though. 1.2 trillion for Manhattan 8 years ago--just seems Albuquerque's numbers should be higher.

You may be more familiar with CAFRs than I am, but trick wording often hides enormous amounts. And in some places you have to go to two separate reports to get the accurate numbers. I heard some guy from New Zealand on a call-in show a while back talk about the problems there, and he mentioned having to get his numbers from two different places. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand:

http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/

and the government's treasury site:

http://www.treasury.govt.nz/financialstatements/

I just happened to go to the sites when I was listening because of the huge discrepancies he mentioned, but I haven't had time to dig around since. As I recall, the difference between what was reported and what is actually in the slush fund was about 1:15. If that's true, the people of NZ are getting royally screwed (and I do mean royally, since they're a commonwealth and that surplus is the queen's money).

Now I can delete those NZ URLs. If you live in NZ, look into this. The expert I heard was talking about tens of billions of dollars being hidden from you.

Subject: RE: BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports
From: GUEST,Natural Guest
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 08:25 PM

Oops. Albuquerque, NEW MEXICO. Sorry. Been thinking about New Mexico the past couple of days.

Subject: RE: BS: Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports
From: GUEST,Natural Guest
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 01:08 PM

Some excerpts from a site about CAFRs:

When Orange County lost a little over $1 billion in derivatives investments, they were crying "poverty" and threatening to shut down schools, police would have to be laid off etc. However someone dug into the Orange County CAFR and found out that the county had about $16 billion in profitable investments! The county, from their profitable liquid investment funds / cash position could have continued performing the same services, without collecting one dime in taxes, and could have done so for another 11.9 years from the existing funds prior to running out of money! The crying stopped.

While he was a Mayor, Jesse Ventura's city council wanted to raise $360,000 in taxes to cover a short fall on their "city budget for schools." Ventura objected when he discovered the city owned $48,000,000 in idle investments funds from which the $360,000 could be drawn from without raising taxes!

1997 state of Texas composite governments owned investments of 8.3 Trillion.... $275,000 in surpluses for every man, woman and child in the state.

In 1989 New Jersey there was a (needed?) 2.8 billion tax increase. But NON DISCLOSED to the public was how much cash the state brought in that same year: $86,775,380,712. Nearly 87 BILLION earnings in their CAFR.

Arizona in 1997, reported an Annual Service Budget of $5.5 billion while the state's CAFR (printed by the Auditor General's Office) showed total gross cash receipts of $17 billion. That's a difference of over $11 billion.

http://www.lightparty.com/Misc/CAFR.html