MSU - The $21 Trillion University

I'll admit it. I'm from Ohio (University of Akron, 1971).

When I arrived in Metro Detroit in the 1970s, courtesy of Eaton Corporation, I took some pleasure as an “Ohio boy” occupying a home situated between neighbors - one a Michigan supporter and the other a State supporter. Frankly, I wondered what was with these people. In Ohio we just had one, Ohio State University. Not, two, premiere “state” universities, each counting nearly half of the people of the state as fanatical sports fans. It was just weird, I thought.

Well, after more than 40 years as a Michigander, I now understand.

This report is exemplary of Michigan State University, her faculty, such as Dr. Mark Skidmore, and student body, which together comprise one of the outstanding, world class State of Michigan universities. This article is also a tribute to Catherine Austin Fitts, president of Solari, Inc., and the publisher of The Solari Report and managing member of Solari Investment Advisory Services, LLC.

Catherine Austin Fitts is the hero who first "blew the whistle" on the mind-blowing, missing $ Trillions in government funds. She is the former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Bush Administration, who, at tremendous personal cost, ferreted out something amiss and has never given up trying to find out the truth

MSU Scholars Find $21 Trillion in Unauthorized Government Spending; Defense Department to Conduct First-Ever Audit, Mark Skidmore, Andy Henion, MSUToday, 11 Dec 2017.

Earlier this year, a Michigan State University economist, working with graduate students and a former government official, found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.

The work of Mark Skidmore and his team, which included digging into government websites and repeated queries to U.S. agencies that went unanswered, coincided with the Office of Inspector General, at one point, disabling the links to all key documents showing the unsupported spending. (Luckily, the researchers downloaded and stored the documents.)

Now, the Department of Defense has announced it will conduct the first department-wide, independent financial audit in its history (read the Dec. 7 announcement here).

The Defense Department did not say specifically what led to the audit. But the announcement came four days after Skidmore discussed his team’s findings on USAWatchdog, a news outlet run by former CNN and ABC News correspondent Greg Hunter.

“While we can’t know for sure what role our efforts to compile original government documents and share them with the public has played, we believe it may have made a difference,” said Skidmore, the Morris Chair in State and Local Government Finance and Policy at MSU.

Please, go here for more.

The Black Budget | Catherine Austin Fitts