Bailout now exceeds costs of every American war combined

The War against Wall Street bankers losing their bonuses has now dwarfed any other war America has ever fought.

The total value of the bailouts undertaken by the federal government in 2008 now exceeds the combined cost of every major war the United States has ever engaged in, according to a comparison of war costs calculated by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the value of the bailouts as calculated by Bloomberg News or Bianco Research.

According to CRS, all major U.S. wars (including such events as the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, but not the invasion of Panama or the Kosovo War), cost a total of $7.2 trillion in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars.

According to Bloomberg, the federal government has made commitments worth a total of $8.5 trillion in the bailouts of 2008. That includes actual expenditures as well as loan and asset guarantees.

Bianco Research puts the total value of the bailouts at $8.7 trillion.

The $296 billion spent on World War II, America’s most expensive war, would be $4.1 trillion adjusted to today’s dollars, according to the CRS report from June.

The adjusted cost of the Civil War would be $60.4 billion for both the Union and the Confederacy combined. The inflation-adjusted cost of the Vietnam War would be $686 billion. The cost of the current Iraq war up to last June was $648 billion, while the adjusted cost for Afghanistan to that point was $171 billion.

The total cost of the American Revolution was a relatively inexpensive $1.8 billion.”

This doesn't count the $1 Trillion stimulus package that Congress is currently debating.

Unlike the War on Some Terror and the War on Some Drugs, I think that we can win this war.

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CBO report

I link to the CBO report in my post on Obama talking about reducing "entitlements" to "balance the budget" and it's worth a blog post.

I just scanned it but it's beyond scary. So, surprise, surprise, we're not all nuts and yes spending to save CEO bonuses and Paulson's pals and keep this Ponzi scheme economy going magically is costing the U.S. it's financial ass.

I was wondering for a moment if I had entered an alternative economic reality called Paulson's twilight zone.

When will the spending stop?

Our government has gotten out of control. There is literally zero accountability within the federal government right now.

If we don't stop printing money, we will make the German's Weimar Republic look like the roaring twenties. Our nation is playing a dangerous game with inflation.

Ultimately, even the most powerful nations cannot continue to devalue their money and still remain a free and prosperous nation.

P.S. Your captcha test is very hard to read. I had to try it several times before getting it right. You might wat to consider fewer letters or less distortion. Anyway, great post!

Nasty Captcha

is nasty on purpose because automated spam machines can't read it and they can read easier ones. If you want to bypass all of that, simply register and log on. It all goes away and a whole series of features then appear. Most sites don't allow anonymous comments who are community blogs, and the reason is all security.