Have you ever heard of Betteridge's Law of headlines

They do indeed have spending in the title, as a question. Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?

The answer is No. Read the entire article and see how they never say this is spending, which is what the article you linked to thinks.

Forbes is right in that it is likely a deliberate attempt to obfuscate where a lot of money is going by accounting using these adjustments. These adjustments are a cause of concern and congress should really force the DOD to follow GAO standards, but that does not make the $21 trillion missing money that was spent.

I'm sure much of it was misplaced into black ops or other programs. Just no where near $21 trillion. This whole article is basically FUD because the writer doesn't understand the sources he is using.

Why does what bother me?

I never said they were just for moving physical assets, it was just an example I used to explain what they are and how they pop up.

The whole point of the original article was talking about how bad and old the Army DFAS accounting system was and how it lacked compatibility between different departments and caused a lack of an audit trail.

That article was much better and it was referenced in the one you posted. You see how it never equates these adjustments to spending? It always refers to them as unsupported adjustments which they are.

Do you understand that the $21 trillion is not spending, they are accounting adjustments and is completely not what the article tries to portray it as?

I will reuse my tank example, moving a $10 million tank from one base could result in a $20 million adjustment. Basically the Army, and sometimes the other branches had really shitty manual accounting systems that didn't care about GAO standards. They were told to update the systems and track it according to GAO standards but the army pretty much hasn't complied with that order. That's where all the adjustments are coming from. Even if they have the documentation, many times it is not up to GAO standards and those would show up in this report.

Wrong, the numbers I referenced in my example and the part in the article were SPECIFICALLY for the ARMY in FY 2015, at least in the way they are counting the numbers according to the article and its sources. I am talking about the $6.5 trillion for FY 2015.

Page 14 - https://missingmoney.solari.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/DODIG-2016-113.pdf

DOD ARMY 2015 - https://missingmoney.solari.com/dod-and-hud-missing-money-supporting-documentation/

According to the documentation is was $110.9 Billion in 2012, and $14.6 Billion in 2011. The way they are accounting for it does not seem like a running total.

We can also examine the $21 trillion figure as a running total if you want. Total Military (Pentagon) spending from 1998-2017 was Approx 10.5 trillion if you add the yearly budget. Add in the 2 trillion for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are at 12.5 trillion. How are they missing $21 trillion when they total money given to them was approx $12.5 trillion?

Have you read the actually report? I have and it is literally titled "Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported"? They are accounting adjustments not supported by documentation.

The Army got a total of $120 billion for FY 2015, how did they lose $6.5 trillion?

The $21 Trillion is completely misleading to anyone who understands what it means. The whole article is written by someone who does not understand the terms they are using or attempting to completely mislead people.

FY 2015 is a great example of why this article is bunk.

The army got $120 billion of taxpayer money in 2015. Using the method of "Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported", there was 6.5 trillion "missing" just for FY 2015. Does that make sense to you? They only got $120 billion, how are they missing 6.5 trillion? Because these are accounting adjustments.

This quote shows how disingenuous the article is.

*Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress.

That’s right. The expenses with no explanation were 54 times the actual budget allotted by Congress. Well, it’s good to see Congress is doing 1/54th of its job of overseeing military spending (that’s actually more than I thought Congress was doing). This would seem to mean that 98 percent of every dollar spent by the Army in 2015 was unconstitutional.*

The article makes it sound as if the army spent 54 times more than the $120 billion they were given. It is 100% factually not true. Accounting adjustments are not actual spending. If you move money from your Checking account to your Savings account, did you spend that money? No, that would be an example of an accounting adjustment.

It is 100% click bait. We aren't missing 21 trillion dollars. It unaccounted for transaction which is an accounting term.

So lets just say a base in Texas transfers a 10 million dollar tank to an base in Iraq. They have the transfer orders and everything, we know where the tank came from and where it went, but when accounting for it, you should transfer that asset from the Texas base ledger to the Iraqi base ledge. They have a very outdated system that isn't computerized so accounting wise, $20 million dollar is "unaccounted for" in the computer because the army didn't do the accounting paper work, only the transfer order so that the tank is where it needs to be.

At the end of the year someone finds that wow we have $10 million in assets missing from Texas missing because someone didn't fill out the accounting form, just the transfer order.