Challenger Investigation Got $175 Million.....

[AllentownJake]

The government spent $175 million investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster.
It spent $152 million on the the Columbia disaster investigation.

It spent $30 million investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

The government only authorized $15 million for the 9/11 Commission.

And how much has the government authorized for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission? You know, the commission charged with getting to the bottom of what caused the financial crisis?

Just $8 million.

You can tell alot about the questions which the government is truly interested in finding answers to by the amount of money it authorizes for the various investigations.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/05/columbia-space-shuttle-investigation.html

[Autumn]

1. Oh come on AllentownJake,

we know that none of these fuckers are even remotely interested in fixing the problem. It doesn't hurt them. Why should any of them care? You know there isn't even a pretense anymore. Hey Bush isn't President anymore. No one gives a flying fuck about any of that.

[AllentownJake]

2. ;-)

I'm waiting to be told that they are just more efficient because the investigations to Challenger and Columbia were under Republicans.

:rofl:

[Xipe Totec]

3. Maybe paper pushers are cheaper than rocket scientists?

Maybe it doesn't take rocket scientists to figure out what happened on 9/11?

[AllentownJake]

4. Derivative instruments

Generally require actuaries that are better paid than Rocket Scientist to create or deconstruct. So those paper pushers are actually more expensive than a NASA scientist or an independnent consultant to review their work.

As for 9-11, I think the scope of the investigation...a few continents and several federal agencies would make an investigation pretty expensive.

[Xipe Totec]

14. More expensive? Yes

More valuable? No.

More numerous? Maybe.

More worthless? Definitely.

[AllentownJake]

15. I think the trillions we have spent on "saving the world financial system"

Might need a little more than a small audit to figure out what went wrong and who did what.

Challenger killed what six people and we lost an expensive shuttle, how many people do you think have died as a result of the global economic collapse.

I'm guessing a little more than six.

[Xipe Totec]

17. That does not make the financial analysts valuable

that just makes the field of endeavor worthless.

Might as well spend money investigating Las Vegas roulette wheels.

[AllentownJake]

19. Well in order to figure out what happened

and how to make sure it doesn't happen in the future, you are going to have to pay a few of those people to tell you. That is the reality of the situation.

$8 million dollars, lol.

[Xipe Totec]

20. What happened? You got screwed.

How to make sure it doesn't happen in the future?

Stop playing their game.

That'll be $8 dollars, please.

Just submit your tax refundable contribution to Democratic Underground.

[AllentownJake]

23. I'm sorry

I wasn't playing their game when Congress and the Federal Reserve decided to save the world.

[Xipe Totec]

24. You didn't have money in the stock market?

Smart person :thumbsup:

[AllentownJake]

25. Little in a 401(k)

Most of it was in bond funds, which aren't even safe anymore.

Other than that, I stay away from Ponzi schemes.

Having worked in the industry, I know what the market actually is.

[Dr Morbius]

5. Eight million bucks is a lot of money.

Really. I tell you what: I'd be damn happy to have a tenth of one percent of that in the bank.

I would imagine that investigations of shuttle disasters involve a whole lot more data to sift through than a sexual liaison. NASA keeps track of everything. And it's damn obvious what happened on Wall Street, but it shouldn't take too much digging to get the books from these banks.

My point is that the kind of investigation dictates how much money it will cost, much more than political will. It's a misconception that spending more money on an investigation will necessarily bear fruit.

[AllentownJake]

6. 8 million is less than the top 10 businesses in the country pay for their annual audit

It is not a lot of money for a financial investigation.

[havocmom]

7. Thank you. You do good work. One can tell by the fact that it get unrecced

like you give a shit what bots think ;)

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Dr Morbius]

16. Oh, now I am an idiot. Thank you.

[AllentownJake]

18. Hey you said 8 million dollars is a lot of money

When companies pay more than that to audting firms for their annual audits

:rofl:

I didn't say the stupid thing, you did.

[Dr Morbius]

21. Criminal investigations are not the same thing as audits.

But what's the point of telling you this? You've decided I'm an idiot.

Thanks for a productive discussion.

[AllentownJake]

22. Uh

This is not a criminal investigation, this is the hearings to figure out what happened, and by its nature is an audit.

The criminal investigation happens next. Do you know how many accountants the FBI employs?

Forensic audits are actually more expensive than regular audits, which is what this would be. The charge rate for fraud investigators with CPAs is pretty high. The government would have to offer said people some sort of incentive to abandon private practice to do this investigation for a little while.

Seriously 8 million dollars is a pittance in the accounting industry for a forensic audit of this scope and the amount of examiners needed to figure out what actually happened to be able to give an accurate report to congress, not that they would read it anyway.

[Rex]

8. 9/11 was a crime scene shipped off to China for immediate scrubbing.

No one in the government wanted to investigate it, because the truth would mean impeaching W and we all know Repukes can't be impeached/fired/jailed for crimes against humanity. Hell they live for destroying humanity, more money in it that way! We all know that.

[AllentownJake]

12. Well when you have an answer you want

Investigations confirming that are rather cheap.

[gmoney]

9. After Ken Starr's soft-core porn book was published, they turned a profit on Monicagate

[AllentownJake]

11. I'd pay 29.95 for the financial fraud porn

My mom's reaction to the SEC porn scandal is this stuff is your porn, you read these reports when you are bored. :rofl:

[waiting for hope]

13. K&R

I agree with the first two .. the third was a waste and the last two .. just sad and pathetic.