All posts tagged: trillion

The  trillion black box

The $1 trillion black box

The sums are vast, but the explanations for the spending range from vague to inscrutable. Consider these items in the law that funded the Department of Defense this year: For “Other Procurement, Air Force”: $32.6 billion. For “Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide”: $35.2 billion. And for “supplies and associated support services” related to U.S. Code Title 10 Section 3601 subsection(c)(3)(B) clauses (i) through (iv): a mere $650 million. Determining what, exactly, all this public money is paying for requires cross-referencing thousands of pages of financial tables, accounting records and congressional committee documents that will leave all but the most determined budgeting sleuth at a loss. Yet this is how the U.S. government explains its funding decisions for the most expensive military in the world. And the cost is growing. “There’s no way that you can follow the money, because it keeps getting twisted like a Rubik’s Cube,” said John Ferrari, a retired Army major general and now a nonresident  senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “None of it is set up to be …

Vanguard index product becomes first ETF to top  trillion in assets

Vanguard index product becomes first ETF to top $1 trillion in assets

ORLANDO, Florida, June 3 : The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, the index investing pioneer’s flagship exchange-traded product, became the first in the history of ETFs to reach and exceed $1 trillion in assets, the investment firm confirmed on Wednesday. The Vanguard fund hit this milestone, the latest record in the remarkable ascent of exchange-traded funds, on Tuesday, less than 18 months after overtaking State Street Investment Management’s SPDR S&P 500 ETF in assets, as investors looking for broad market exposure also sought out the lowest-cost funds. VOO levies a management fee of only 0.03 per cent, compared to 0.09 per cent for the State Street fund, which now is third in the three-way race between those two firms and BlackRock Inc.. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has the second-largest ETF tracking the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, with its iShares Core S&P 500 ETF that now boasts $860 billion in assets and fees of 0.03 per cent, according to VettaFi. SPY, the market pioneer that helped open up the ETF market with its 1993 launch, …