| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020830)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020830" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2931 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Summary |
| Imagine for a moment that the United States government is a public corporation. Imagine |
| that its management structure, fiscal performance, and budget are all up for review. Now |
| imagine that you're a shareholder in USA Inc. How do you feel about your investment? |
| Because 45% of us own shares in publicly traded companies, nearly half the country expects |
| quarterly updates on our investments. But although 100% of us are stakeholders in the United |
| States, very few of us look closely at Washington's financials. If we were long-term investors, |
| how would we evaluate the federal government's business model, strategic plans, and operating |
| efficiency? How would we react to its earnings reports? Nearly two-thirds of all American |
| households pay federal income taxes, but very few of us take the time to dig into the numbers of |
| the entity that, on average, collects 13% of our annual gross income (not counting another 15- |
| 30% for payroll and various state and local taxes). |
| We believe it's especially important to pay closer attention to one of our most important |
| investments. |
| As American citizens and taxpayers, we care about the future of our country. As investors, we're |
| in an on-going search for data and insights that will help us make more informed investment |
| decisions. It's easier to predict the future if one has a keen understanding of the past, but we |
| found ourselves struggling to find good information about America's financials. So we decided to |
| assemble - in one place and in a user-friendly format - some of the best data about the world's |
| biggest "business." We also provide some historical context for how USA Inc.'s financial model |
| has evolved over decades. And, as investors, we look at trend lines which help us understand |
| the patterns (and often future directions) of key financial drivers like revenue and expenses. |
| The complexity of USA Inc.'s challenges is well known, and our presentation is just a starting |
| point; it's far from perfect or complete. But we are convinced that citizens - and investors - |
| should understand the business of their government. Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de |
| Tocqueville knew that - armed with the right information - the enlightened citizenry of America |
| would make the right decisions. It is our humble hope that a transparent financial framework can |
| help inform future debates. |
| In the conviction that every citizen should understand the finances of USA Inc. and the plans of |
| its "management team," we examine USA Inc.'s income statement and balance sheet and |
| present them in a basic, easy-to-use format. We summarize our thoughts in PowerPoint form and |
| in this brief text summary at www.kpcb.com/usainc. We encourage people to take our data and |
| thoughts and study them, critique them, augment them, share them, and make them better. |
| There's a lot of material - think of it as a book that happens to be a slide presentation. |
| www.kpcb.com |
| USA Inc. |
| vii |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020830 |
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|
