In the process, though, it fractures the product life-cycle for systems built by those private companies, raises overhead costs on remaining work, and in general make the companies less competitive.
Their financial statements told them whether the entire business made money in the month, but on the months that they lost money, they were stumped: did they underbid their jobs, or spend too much money producing the work, or was their overhead too high?
Frank also cites an American Bar Association ethics ruling suggesting law firms should only bill clients their actual cost plus a reasonable allocation of overhead, including the cost of outsourced legal work.