A long time ago, Sr. Margaret Loyola Scanlon, S. L., my beloved principal at Holy Family High School in North Denver once said to me:
“Dennis, we all have to operate in an atmosphere of Internal Control. Even our church bingo has two sets of hands and eye’s counting and reviewing the money, and someone else makes the deposit. We even assign two students to count the proceeds for tickets sold at the Senior Prom. Internal Control is the key to good economics.” Every time I hear the words “lack of internal control,” and we hear those words a lot in our audits of Denver’s agencies, I think of Sr. Margaret Loyola and her wise words. If she is ever canonized, she will be the patron of Auditors and Internal Control.
While the legislation changes moment by moment, perhaps the most egregious weakness of the proposed $700 Billion bailout of Wall Street proposed by the Bush administration is a total lack of internal control. That the administration has asked Congress to hurry up and hand over $700 Billion to one individual, with no other set of hands and eyes to be accountable for the distribution of those dollars is the total and unconscionable lack of internal control. Sr. Margaret would be furious.
Forty four years ago Robert Kennedy told us in The Pursuit of Justice, “The problem of power is not to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use—of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.” If Congress rushes to give unbridled power to one individual the nation will mirror what Edmund Burke warned five years before our Declaration of Independence, “the greater the power, the greater the abuse.” And the powerful will continue to abuse our patience.
The folks that got us in this mess and now want the bailout should have heard what else Sr. Margaret Loyola shared with me about internal control. “Dennis, I will not always be around to make sure you practice proper personal and financial internal control. But, remember, Dennis, God is always watching and knows whether you are exercising internal control.”
In this time of trial will we be able to find those who live for the public rather than off the public?
Showing posts with label bailout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bailout. Show all posts
Friday, September 26, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
A depression story appropriate for today
On the way up in the elevator to the Denver Auditor’s Office early this morning, with the largest Us Government financial bailout, yes, the very same 700 billion bailout of our financial crisis on everyone’s mind, someone asked me, “Auditor, are we heading for a 1929 Depression?”
I told him we are in for a lot of major economic pain and it will be very depressing.
I thought of my mother and her parents who lived at 2528 Hooker in North Denver. I always think of that house when the Great Depression comes to mind. The house sat just west of Old St. Dominic’s Church at West 25th and Grove Streets. When the Dominican Friars ran out of food for the homeless during the Great Depression, the 1929 Depression, they would say “Go over there to Mrs. Flaherty, she always keeps sandwiches in her ice box.” I remember that ice box, with heavy wooden and metal doors, and I often enjoyed slamming the doors, loud clanging thunder.
My mother told me she once asked her mother, “Mom, why do we give those guys from the roads and rail yard the sandwiches?
She answered that in Ireland, the place of her birth; it was customary to give strangers and travelers food without question. The legend had it that it could be a test by God to test the charity of an individual for which one could be accountable on the final day of reckoning.
“You know, Nellie, one of these men from the rail yards, could be St. Joseph in disguise to test our charity and to text our faith,” my grandmother added.
One day, my grandmother heard my mother slam the kitchen door on a solicitous traveler.
My grandmother rushed into the kitchen from the small dining room and asked, “Nellie, why did you slam the door on that poor man?”
“Momma, that man was no St. Joseph, that man had the smell of liquor on his breath,” my mother responded indignantly.
Without a pause, my grandmother shouted to her, “Nellie, go get that man and bring him back, it could be St. Patrick himself.”
At all our family reunions, the air was thick with Depression stories, depressing orphanage stories, years of painful homelessness and families divided.
I was hoping my son, Daniel, and all his many cousins might be spared the anvil test of a Great Depression. I was hoping they might not face a painful economic reckoning and depressing stories at family gatherings. Now I am not so sure.
I told him we are in for a lot of major economic pain and it will be very depressing.
I thought of my mother and her parents who lived at 2528 Hooker in North Denver. I always think of that house when the Great Depression comes to mind. The house sat just west of Old St. Dominic’s Church at West 25th and Grove Streets. When the Dominican Friars ran out of food for the homeless during the Great Depression, the 1929 Depression, they would say “Go over there to Mrs. Flaherty, she always keeps sandwiches in her ice box.” I remember that ice box, with heavy wooden and metal doors, and I often enjoyed slamming the doors, loud clanging thunder.
My mother told me she once asked her mother, “Mom, why do we give those guys from the roads and rail yard the sandwiches?
She answered that in Ireland, the place of her birth; it was customary to give strangers and travelers food without question. The legend had it that it could be a test by God to test the charity of an individual for which one could be accountable on the final day of reckoning.
“You know, Nellie, one of these men from the rail yards, could be St. Joseph in disguise to test our charity and to text our faith,” my grandmother added.
One day, my grandmother heard my mother slam the kitchen door on a solicitous traveler.
My grandmother rushed into the kitchen from the small dining room and asked, “Nellie, why did you slam the door on that poor man?”
“Momma, that man was no St. Joseph, that man had the smell of liquor on his breath,” my mother responded indignantly.
Without a pause, my grandmother shouted to her, “Nellie, go get that man and bring him back, it could be St. Patrick himself.”
At all our family reunions, the air was thick with Depression stories, depressing orphanage stories, years of painful homelessness and families divided.
I was hoping my son, Daniel, and all his many cousins might be spared the anvil test of a Great Depression. I was hoping they might not face a painful economic reckoning and depressing stories at family gatherings. Now I am not so sure.
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