Writing on Business Spectator, well-regarded financial commentator Alan Kohler reports on a new book which details the real cost of the Iraq War [aka the Iraq Debacle]. The figures are truly astounding and the ramifications, both now and into the future, extraordinary.
"A new book by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-prize winning economist and former chief economist of the World Bank, makes a persuasive case that the credit crisis and US economic downturn is, at heart, a result of the Iraq war.
Stiglitz, and co-author Linda Bilmes, have estimated the cost of the war at $3 trillion – more than 50 times the original estimate.
They point out that most of this money has been borrowed, since President George W Bush cut taxes at the same time, and assert that it was the hidden cause of the credit crisis because the Alan Greenspan Federal Reserve colluded with the Bush Administration by flooding the US with cheap credit to keep interest rates down."
And.....whew!!!:
"In their book, Stiglitz and Bilmes list what just one of those three trillions could have paid for: eight million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students. The $US3 trillion could have fixed America's social security problem for half a century."
Read the complete piece here and let it take your breath away - as well as ponder the idiocy of George W, Dick Cheney and those neocons and other "advisors".
"A new book by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-prize winning economist and former chief economist of the World Bank, makes a persuasive case that the credit crisis and US economic downturn is, at heart, a result of the Iraq war.
Stiglitz, and co-author Linda Bilmes, have estimated the cost of the war at $3 trillion – more than 50 times the original estimate.
They point out that most of this money has been borrowed, since President George W Bush cut taxes at the same time, and assert that it was the hidden cause of the credit crisis because the Alan Greenspan Federal Reserve colluded with the Bush Administration by flooding the US with cheap credit to keep interest rates down."
And.....whew!!!:
"In their book, Stiglitz and Bilmes list what just one of those three trillions could have paid for: eight million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students. The $US3 trillion could have fixed America's social security problem for half a century."
Read the complete piece here and let it take your breath away - as well as ponder the idiocy of George W, Dick Cheney and those neocons and other "advisors".
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