What the bailout cost is bigger than:

[liberal N proud]

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

The total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

That is $686 billion less than the cost of the credit crisis thus far.

The only single American event in history that even comes close to matching the cost of the credit crisis is World War II: Original Cost: $288 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $3.6 trillion

The $4.6165 trillion dollars committed so far is about a trillion dollars ($979 billion dollars) greater than the entire cost of World War II borne by the United States: $3.6 trillion, adjusted for inflation (original cost was $288 billion).



http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/11/big-bailouts-bigger-bucks/

[KharmaTrain]

1. And What Have We Gotten So Far?

Most of those other expenditures had a positive motive and result. So far Klink Paulsen has doled out about 300 billion and the credit markets are still in deep freeze, defaults and bankrupcies are soaring and stock prices and portfolios continue to erode. This guy's been reactive mode...not anticipating problems but trying to put out fires that were already out of control. There's been no accounting...he's been doling out a lot of the money to the same people who gambled our economy into this mess.

What's both troubling and confusing is what the long term affect of this massive spew of money will do to any recovery. Will it create rampant inflation that will render whatever savings people have as useless or deflation that not only drives down prices, but also wages and revenues...constricting growth. I don't think most economists really have a handle on this...and Paulsen certainly doesn't.

[grahamhgreen]

2. The bailout is a joke. We will Weimar republic the world with this crap (ie make money worthless)

[TheUnspeakable]

3. Malloy was talking about this the other night-

(that website)-he said his wife had asked him "where is all this money coming from?" as they were watching the news-right at that moment Brian Williams said "that they were just going to print more money"-does ANYONE understand what a DISASTER this will be? why is Obama going along with this? I'm getting the same sense of unreality that I had during tthe build-up to Iraq-like everyone's gone crazy but me!