Wednesday, Nov 26, 2008
Putting those scary numbers in perspective
Big Picture: Big Bailouts, Bigger Bucks
It's difficult to comprehend the enormity of the numbers involved in the US bailouts so far - the figure currently stands at $4.6 trillion and counting. To put this in perspective, this is more than the costs of the Vietnam, Iraq and Korean wars, the moon race and NASA, the S&L crisis, the post WW2 Marshall plan to rebuild Europe, and the purchase of Lousiana put together, even adjusting for inflation.
See the article for a more detailed breakdown of the mind-boggling figures involved.
Posted by little professor @ 01:17 AM (336 views) Add Comment
4 Comments
- If you do not have an admin password leave the password field blank.
- If you would like to request a password allowing you to add comments and blog news articles without needing each one approved manually, send an e-mail to the webmaster.
- Your email address is required so we can verify that the comment is genuine. It will not be posted anywhere on the site, will be stored confidentially by us and never given out to any third party.
- Please note that any viewpoints published here as comments are user's views and not the views of HousePriceCrash.co.uk.
- Please adhere to the Guidelines
1. little professor said...
See also
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/data?pid=avimage&iid=i0YrUuvkygWs
2. Fingerbob69 said...
When those simple fellows working in the City today, and the equally simple investors, both here and abroad that employ them, wake up to the true enormity of the dollar funds being deployed by the Fed ...and that at some point they still expect America to pay back this money, four things strike me as likely:
The credit ratings agencies will downgrade the USA.
Investors will pull their funds... US T. Bills will be worthless.
The Dollar will be less than worthless.
The USA will be bankrupt.
Who will bail out the Good ol' USA? And more to the point, just how close are we to an international 'awakening' to the true scale of America's indebtedness and the consequences there of?
3. lierbag said...
Couldn't get the link to work, but here are some nice mental pictures to clarify things. I can't account for their accuracy (I remembered seeing these quotes on an internet site recently) but here goes:
'If you asked for a trillion dollars at your bank in $100 bills, it would make a stack 800 miles high.
Laid end-to-end, a trillion dollars worth of $1 bills would extend from the Earth to the Sun.'
4. Wofmd said...
Bear in mind that the R&D spend required by the space race resulted in numerous technologies we now take for granted.
Spending on wars/defence results in high blue collar jobs….and R&D (radio, internet, satellites, software, hardware etc…)
Spending on broke banks? Not so sure what the benefits will be…