96 The Solari Report / 2018 Annual Wrap Up / Part Two federal resources is driven by a cocktail of political considerations focused on centralizing control of resources, as opposed to economic performance and fiduciary responsibility. This means that return on investment to taxpayers is ignored. This also means there are limited criteria and incen- tives to ensure that federal resources optimize human and environmental resources. Essentially, the federal budget is the vehicle used to engineer a financial system that is not aligned, reported, or optimized in tandem with our living ecosystems. Combined with fiat currencies, this is the single greatest reason for damage to our living ecosystems globally. The wealth potential that could result from a reengineering of the current governmental invest- ment model is compelling. Consequently, it is worth giving serious consideration to structural changes that will make the pie bigger instead of merely liquidating our world. The current state of performance standards for government spending and investment was best de- scribed to me by Richard Ravitch, real estate developer and Chairman of the AFL-CIO Housing Trust and later Lieutenant Governor of New York, who said to me over dinner at the Jockey Club in Washington in 1997: “As long as I can get government subsidies, what do I care if people have education or jobs?” The challenge of envisioning, let alone implementing, performance or reporting standards for government finances is not an academic one. The current government budget is successfully op- erating according to performance goals—those goals are merely outside the law and the “official reality” as we believe them to be. Government finances are propping up a 500-year-old global central banking–warfare model whereby the centralization of control of global resources by global banks and corporations is being facilitated. To put it simply, the federal budget manifests the current state of affairs, whereby unproductive and unhealthy behavior in the private and public sectors—whether in the “military-industrial complex” or at the municipal and household levels—is subsidized with our nation’s equity as well as equity drained globally. This means that a negative return on investment to taxpayers is facili- tating an increasingly negative total economic return throughout the economy. This has resulted in an entire economy and various markets increasingly becoming dependent on government money. Consequently, a reengineering of the federal budget to performance standards designed to optimize economic health would necessitate a fundamental reengineering of the entire economy. That is a tall order—one that likely explains the decision to shift all of the capital promised to retirees offshore and into other economic entities before the boomers started to retire. Appreciating the absence of economic performance standards is a prerequisite to appreciating the extent to which the government budget is centralizing control of wealth in a manner that destroys wealth and, therefore, the tremendous wealth potential of real change. Change requires hope and there is plenty to be hopeful for once you understand that there is never enough money when returns are negative, but money is increasing where returns are positive. I have several writings that describe use of the federal budget to prop up uneconomic private activities and the potential for changing the investment model: · “The Myth of the Rule of Law” · Dillon Read & Co. Inc. & the Aristocracy of Stock Profits · “The Story of Edgewood Technology Services,” Parts 1-3