Highway to hell

The Federal Debt Elevator: Going Up

by Gary North

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If you think the Federal debt ceiling is anything but an elevator, I've got news for you.
Maybe you saw the story about the Air Force airlift of $12 billion in unmarked bills that landed in Iraq sometime between 2003 and 2004 – no one seems sure just when. The story was written by a Los Angeles Times reporter and published on January 13.

Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.

There was a slight glitch in the execution of the plan. Some $6.6 billion of this – three fully loaded planes full – has gone missing.
The story was picked up by the Web, but got little play in the mainstream media. The Huffington Post and Fox News reported it, but not the other major media. The fact that several plane loads of shrink-wrapped $100 bills are unaccounted for is not big news in the minds of America's mainstream editors. A search on Google reveals how little mainstream media interest there was.
There was a modification published by Fox. The auditor in charge said that he never used the figure $6.6 billion. He claimed that only $2.8 billion are unaccounted for. This story was also not picked up by the media.
My point is not that the Pentagon cannot account for either $6.6 billion in missing currency or only $2.8 billion. That is hardly news. My point is that the conflicting sums are so miniscule in comparison with what the U.S. government wastes every day that the story is not considered media worthy when any agency loses this much. The public is so used to stories of wasted billions that this story is a curiosity at best. 
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Comment: Like the dog that did not bark in Sherlock Holmes' investigation, what is not in the mainstream media (or for that matter in mainstream economics) is often the most significant and most important thing to note.