What if you managed your information assets as if it were money?

For a more satirical look at the problem, imagine if all the information assets in your company were actual money.  In reality, this is somewhat true because it took money to generate these assets in the first place.  So, how would you control your assets now?  Would you simply let anyone delete or corrupt your assets?   Would you put all your money on a shelf and let anyone in the company “access” it?  Would you let your people simply stuff it into their desks?  Take them home?  Move them up to some internet sharing site?  Hand them off to a contractor?  Clearly no business that is to survive would ever consider managing their financial assets this way.  Why would you manage your information assets this way?  Businesses cannot afford to mismanage information assets in such a way.