Too big to fail, too complex to follow

The News & Observer reports today that North Carolina's unemployment office made $28 million in improper payments over the last two years, and it's sending letters out to get some of the money back.

From the story:

Recipients, all of whom received unemployment benefits for a year or longer, are getting anywhere from one to six letters depending on the number of times their benefits have been extended.

The final letter has the correct amount due, but the letters often aren't arriving in the right order.

Six letters, huh? That sounds like a government. The same type of entity that spends $391 million to personally verify addresses before mailing anything to them and sends out letters to let people know they'll get a letter telling them they'll get a check.

So I won't ask you to explain why anyone would get six letters. But can you at least tell us what went wrong?

(ESC Spokesman Larry) Parker said the improper payments are the result of the ESC paying people from the wrong funding sources and thus overdrawing some accounts and aren't the result of incorrectly calculating individuals' benefits. But he was unable to explain how the accounting problems might result in some people owing the state money.

Read the full story for more detail and context.

Things like this remind me of how complicated we've made our world. For example, I bank with Wachovia, which was taken over by Wells Fargo during the banking meltdown of 2008. In October my accounts will be fully converted.

And this is what they figured I'd need to know about that:











I wrote the number of printed pages each document contains on the their fronts. I have a checking account and a savings account, and it takes 92 pages to explain the name and rule changes.