I walked past this government department in Washington on Friday. It is near the White House. It's not quite what it seems though. I rather hoped it was a department to examine waste in government spending (a growing task in a country with a $3 trillion budget), but it turns out to be more of an equivalent to our Financial Services Authority. Shame.
13 comments:
I hope we can get back to British items on your return. Whilst I am interested in the USA.I am more interested in what is happening here. I hope you have got it out of your system and do not refer to the US for at least a week.
They must be hard at it all day going over Bush's profligate, uncosted spending! Haha!
Iain,
A thrift is the US equivalent of a buidling society.
I am with Johnny Norfolk. Enough of the holiday snaps. Back to work.
I took a photo almost exactly the same as yours walking past this office a couple of years ago. I have it on my office wall (I work in Productivity). I particularly love the fact that so thrifty is the Office of Thrift Supervision that they took a low cost (but slightly different coloured) option when their "R" fell off.
I always rather liked the idea of the National Debt Clock, found in New York.
We ought to have one fitted to the outside of the Treasury, ideally with the addition of an indicator for "Change since this government took office".
I like the way they are too tight to replace the R
Isn't that the National Audit Office?
I walked past that last year and walked inside to ask them what they did! It is disappointing.
Good idea Iain how about Derek Conway to be the first CEO?
Remember the amendment which allows free speech now....
Regulators didn't prevent the sub-prime crisis.
In may ways they caused it by blocking out owners from supervising their directors and executives.
Ownership activism is breaking out in the US.
Regulators are a distraction, clogging up the world with ineffective barriers to foolish risk-taking.
Only owners have the motivation, the time and the expertise to monitor companies and the state of their risk management.
The underlying influence that inhibited the rights of owners in the western world was Karl Marx. China the supposedly Communist country today has more respect for capital than the west, where we allow hired hands to gamble with other peoples' money at no risk to themselves.
Bring back owners and reduce the ineffective role of regulators.
I've blogged on this today at www.the-tap.blogspot.com
It would be a good idea to have a department to examine waste in government spending... just one problem..
In this country it would have to be based in London. It would have to have a chairman on at least 100k, for a two day week. It's spending on paperclips alone would reach £500,000 per month. The entire management team would have to travel the world to review how other countries control their waste. At the end of their first year they could produce a glossy report, at a glitzy PR event, saying how they have saved £2 million in their first year. Shame their operating costs are well over £50 million! But hey the PM can say how much waste they are saving as we taxpayers dig every deeper into our pockets as the country falls apart.
That's more than enough excruciatingly boring posts about the USA, Iain. Thanks and all that.
Meanwhile, what are we to make of the fact that the Conservative poll lead appears to be shrinking? I never believed it was 11% or 3%, the extremes I recall from last year, but about 6 or 7 seemed plausible. Yet Dave's boys are now back down to 37% versus 32 or 33 for the Evil Party.
What's happening? Has Evil purchased so many public-sector, media, underclass, and billionaire votes that nothing can move its support below 32%
I often think what Gladstone would think if he came to the present and saw the level of government expenditure. I'm sure he would think all his work at the Exchequer had been in vain and no one had listened to a word he had said.
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