H12083
Headlines : "War on Terror"The more-than-$2-trillion war
Two scholars, one a Nobel Prize winner, revisit their estimate of the total economic impact of war in Iraq. They’ve found their previous $2 trillion figure to be low after totaling current and future budgetary costs, the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by the political uncertainty in the Middle East. Dept. of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has countered with, “One does not go to war on the basis of calculations by bean counters.”
War in Iraq was a matter of choice, as is continuing this occupation of Iraq.
Each day the U.S. stays in Iraq, we accrue costs that will be reflected in budget outlays, lost productivity and individual pain and suffering for decades to come. Well Mr. President, just exactly what are the benefits to America that justify the full cost of occupying Iraq,
in both blood and treasure?
Republished from Nieman Watchdog
In January, we estimated that the true cost of the Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, a figure that seemed shockingly high. But since that time, the cost of the war – in both blood and money – has risen even faster than our projections anticipated. More than 2,500 American troops have died and close to 20,000 have been wounded since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. And the $2 trillion number – the sum of the current and future budgetary costs along with the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East – now seems low.
One source of difficulty in getting an accurate picture of the direct cost of prosecuting the war is the way the government does its accounting. With “cash accounting,” income and expenses are recorded when payments are actually made – for example, what you pay off on your credit card today – not the amount outstanding. By contrast, with “accrual accounting,” income and expenses are recorded when the commitment is made.
Posted by GWHunta
Small town, working class from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. 1990 went to work for the MDOC; the very forefront of the U.S. Prison / Industrial Complex. Learned there, the hard way, that if I wasn't one of them; "they" would be pit against me. ...
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The way they’re going to get the “money” to pay for this is by devaluing the currency. AKA Print more money. You have one dollar worth so much gold — simple — but. Once you ask that same amount of gold to cover the value of 2, 2000, 2,000,000,000 dollars. What happens to the value of that original dollar?
To the extent that the whole world owns USD, the whole world is going to be asked to pay the cost of this war. Unless they cash in their dollars. In which case, square one, if every foreign entity decides to cash in their USD, that single greenback will be reduced to the value of a quarter.
Really poor planning on someone’s part. I’d say. See also :
The Dollar’s Full System Meltdown
{
The U.S. Dollar is kaput. Confidence in the currency is eroding by the day.
A report in The Sydney Morning Herald stated, “Australia’s Treasurer Peter Costello has called on East Asia’s central bankers to ‘telegraph’ their intentions to diversify out of American investments and ensure an ‘orderly adjustment’….Central banks in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong have channeled immense foreign reserves into American government bonds, helping to prop up the US dollar and hold down interest rates,’ said Costello, but ‘the strategy has changed.’”
Indeed, the strategy has changed. The world has come to its senses and is moving away from the green slip of paper that is currently mired in $8.7 trillion of debt.
The central banks now want to reduce their USD reserves while trying to do as little damage to their own economies as possible. That’ll be difficult. If a sell-off ensues, it will start a stampede for the exits.
There’s little hope of an “orderly adjustment” as Costello opines; that’s just false optimism. When the greenback begins listing; things will turn helter-skelter quickly.
}
There’s little hope of an “orderly adjustment” as Costello opines; that’s just false optimism. When the greenback begins listing; things will turn helter-skelter quickly.
See American Prison Planet for the helter-skelter aspect.
What would the sages say about this?
1. Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.
Silver, though limited in supply, once mined was then placed into circulation even if expended on destruction. Very little loss and or environmental impact on the biosphere.
Fielding a modern army of 140,000 soldiers and thousands of additional contract employees providing support services deployed 8,000 miles from “home” are consuming vast quantities of non-renewable resources that once expended can never be replaced. These additional energy expenditures are having a detrimental effect on our biosphere globally. This impact is then magnified by the fact that had this same level of economic activity been directed towards solutions as opposed to destruction, humanity and our bioshpere in general may have had a much softer landing in the coming economic crash.
Such is the cost of global calamity.
Knwoing of the future he believes will be the result of his presidency,
GW recently had this to say regarding the sacrifice of national treasure, the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history,
“look like just a comma.”