by Laura Conaway

Debbie Raucher writes:

I saw on the blog recently a post from David about how it's hard for the banks to be able to say what they've done with the money because if you get a check from mom and dad, it goes in your checking account and who knows where the money went specifically. I feel motivated to comment because I have spent my life working for non-profit organizations. We would get various federal, state and local grants and the government would insist that we scrupulously account for how we spent their specific money. It certainly was a pain, but definitely not impossible.

 

For every salary that got paid, I could tell you that 15 hours was paid by this grant, 10 hours by that grant and 5 by this other grant (and we all had to keep time sheets to justify the breakdown — we couldn't just make it up). And the same went for every other expense as well. So all I'm saying is that if nonprofit executives who earn an infinitesimal fraction of what bank CEOs make could figure out how to account for how money was spent, I would think it's not too much to ask that CEOs do as well.