So far, opaque accounting and
negligible government disclosure have hidden the costs of bad investments in municipal infrastructure, high - speed trains, shopping malls and even whole cities built from scratch for which there is no apparent demand.
That is well short of the $ 7.2 million to $ 24.5 million range reported by Summers, a former Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and ex-adviser to President Barack Obama, in his most
recent government disclosure form covering 2010.
The SEC's rules were gradually built up in response to frequently recurring scandals revealing that, absent
forced government disclosure, corporate CEOs, often with the tacit approval of their boards of directors, have strong incentives to secretly pay themselves above market compensation at shareholder expense.