The catalog of credit card abuse by government workers at this web site stretches credulity to breaking point. Speaking as someone whose company has been unable to accept government credit card payments through PayPal (because there can be no third parties to the transactions) I am amazed at the laxity of some government spending controls, as revealed by the auditors' report.

Now I realize that the government auditors can't be everywhere, and that some charges that seem unacceptable might be perfectly valid, but this kind of thing should be stamped out. I think it's time for government to reverse the current thinking on things like this. Centralized scrutiny isn't working, because the transaction volume is too high compared with the number of people available to scrutinize them. Hierarchical scrutiny isn't working for the same reason. As reports go up the tree more and more detail is aggregated, hiding the grubby little secrets in a welter of transactions. What we need is an army of volunteer auditors. And today's Internet age can provide them!

Much of this spending couldn't be justified as secret, so why not send the details of each transaction to a few randomly chosen volunteer auditors. If a certain number of volunteers flagged the transaction as potentially worthy of audit then it could be put on a list for scrutiny, and the auditors could give those special attention when it comes time to look at the books.

Being under the public's eye would cause government spendthrifts to think twice, and volunteering to scrutinize transactions would allow citizens to provide the public service President Obama is keen to see engendered once more among the wider community.

Yes, it would be difficult to manage, and there would be costs involved in setting up the systems to support it. But the savings could easily pay the costs, and I know I'd rather be spending money tightening up government financial responsibility than funding what is, simply put, embezzlement of public funds. The volunteers who caught unjustifiable spending could be rewarded from the funds saved.

It would also be nice to see some of these embezzlers prosecuted, to encourage others to keep their fingers clean. Why this hasn't happened I can only guess, but it's time for more accountability. Let's open up what doesn't need to be kept secret, and use modern technology to distribute responsibility for fiscal prudence across the whole population. I believe this is approach can be started small, and expanded as the volunteer base grows and the system's worth is proved.

Would you volunteer to scrutinize, say, ten transactions a week as a public service? I know I would, busy as I am.

If this approach works, next we can start to look at how we can scrutinize the behavior of the banks and other financial institutions whose incautious behavior and cozy relationships with the regulators have cost us so dear in the last few months.