$50,000 or $1,000,000 - What's The Difference?

It seems federal government executives deal with such very large budget numbers daily that they lose any sensitivity to their value. If you talk in terms of Billions and sometimes Trillions (the debt) of dollars, a mere one Million dollars is a very small number. According to a November 3, 2011 report by Bloomberg reporter Jim Snyder,

“'Lazard [Lazard Ltd.-a financial advisory firm] advised that no further capital be allocated from the government to Solyndra,' George Bilicic, vice chairman of investment banking at Hamilton, Bermuda-based Lazard, said in an interview today. 'We didn’t think it made economic sense.'

Bilicic said he delivered the advice to administration officials on an Aug. 28 conference call. U.S. officials rejected the restructuring plan, and Solyndra closed a day later.

$1 Million Advice

The department paid Lazard about $1 million for its advice on Solyndra, according to Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman."

There are plenty of highly competent financial advisory firms in the U.S., plenty of whom could have arrived at that analysis and advice for, say, $50,000. But when $1 million sounds like pocket change, who is going to question the bill?

The federal government needs private auditing firms reviewing its budgets and bids. Where is the independent monitoring that should be required, especially of an entity (the federal government) that has no profit/loss internalized control system and that spends other people's money?