Consider the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, the Enron/dot.com bubble-bursting in the late 1990s, and our most recent financial market debacles leading to the Great Recession.

In the savings and loan crisis, regulators and their accounting principles helped out many depository institutions whipsawed by financial market and real estate developments to stay on their feet, at least on paper, as real economic losses were effectively unrecognized in reported capital.  The accounting delays in recognizing these losses enabled many insolvent firms to “gamble for resurrection,” in Ed Kane’s terms, unleashing incentives that trebled losses for taxpayers and citizens standing behind the deposit insurance system.

How about Enron, and the dot.com bubble more generally?  Once again, we learned that rapid growth could be bought in part with costs and losses left out of financial reports offered to the public.  Parties tasked with monitoring and guarding the integrity of the financial reporting process – parties like credit rating agencies, accounting firms, and accounting standard-setters themselves – shared blame, along with other parties in the financial system.

Valuable lessons like these continued to go unlearned in the years heading into our most recent debacle, the financial and economic crisis of 2007-2009.  Moral hazard associated with underpriced, under-monitored, and poorly-accounted-for public insurance programs generated widespread risk-taking in financial markets.  The delay in recognizing related risks and losses in accounting statements played a key role in magnifying the costs of the crisis.  Accounting and financial reporting shortfalls arose in the “private sector,” as well as in key governmental entities standing behind the system.

Today, we may be on the cusp of “learning” more unlearned lessons.  And this time, we aren’t just exposed to a few autumn leaves falling to the ground, or a few twigs or limbs falling in a storm.  This time, we may be looking at a rotting core – the trunk and roots of our society — in our governments themselves.

We are already starting to see a few more leaves and twigs on the ground lately — in Detroit, Stockton, and elsewhere.  But they could have a lot of company.

Looking at the 50 states, Truth in Accounting’s most recent analysis (see HERE) calculated that the state governments are facing employee retirement benefit liabilities in excess of $1 trillion – and more than 80% of them are still not included on the state governments’ balance sheets.    This is just at the state level; many (hundreds?) of local governments are facing similar circumstances.

Bill Bergman, pension liabilities

Are taxpayers and citizens going to stand behind this system, and take it in on the chin again?  What if our federal government intercedes?  Will this insulate us?  On the other hand, our federal government could be in even worse shape than the states.

We will have more to say in the days and weeks ahead.  For now, a relevant phrase from the Declaration of Independence (1776) provides some good perspective:

“… But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. …”

This is the first entry in Bill Bergman’s new blog on the Truth in Accounting website. He explains the blog’s goal here.

NEXT ARTICLE Exclusive governor questionnaire: Candidates differ on taxes, corruption, reform

RECOMMENDED

  1. Rasmussen polls: Quinn inches ahead; Durbin maintains strong lead
  2. Dick Durbin, Jim Oberweis lock horns at Chicago Tribune editorial board
  3.  Calls for Illinois pension reform date back nearly a century
  4. What we and the candidates need to consider as Election Day approaches
  5. Bruce Rauner’s fact-free rhetoric starting to lose its punch