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POPSBailout Might Make Things Worse * Hundreds of leading economists, including numerous Nobel prize winners, question the bailout * Former White House economist (Steve Hanke) adamantly opposes the bailout * Nobel prize economist and former chief economist of the World Bank (Joseph Stiglitz) opposes the bailout *The former Secretary of the Treasury (Paul O'Neill) questions the bailout * A prominent economist (Nouriel Roubini) says "The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown." * A highly-regarded economist (Michael Hudson) says that the bailout is a giveaway that will cause hyperinflation and dollar collapse
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POPSAnyone Remember the Cost of The Wars? Estimates of the true long-term costs of the President's war of choice, including payments of health care and veterans benefits into the distant future, soar into the budgetary stratosphere. They range from the Congressional Budget Office's $1-2 trillion to an estimate by economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes of up to $4-5 trillion. So we're talking somewhere between one-and-a-half and seven bailouts-worth of taxpayer dollars flowing into the morass of disaster, corruption, and carnage in Iraq. As Chalmers Johnson, author most recently of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, the final volume of his Blowback Trilogy, has pointed out for years, the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, and America's wars are in the process of bankrupting us.
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POPSThe Eight Year Bailout
Swanson nails it in this excellent article--see link for all of it, but here's some: For at least two years as vice president, Cheney received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Halliburton in "deferred compensation." Of course, that was justifiable in terms of the public good: society might have collapsed had Cheney not piled up more riches. But his riches and Halliburton's were a little crumb off the loaf of large-scale looting that has been the primary focus of our government all these years. While Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes called their book about Iraq "The Three Trillion Dollar War," they were being very conservative. If you read their book, you find that incredibly conservative calculations place the amount of money wasted at no less than five trillion dollars, and mounting, with no end in sight. And who gets that money? Well, certainly not "the troops" so cynically used to squeeze it out of those gelatinous masses of spineless goo that go by the name "House" and
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POPS10 things all economists believe "If economics is finally a science, what, exactly, does it teach? With the help of Columbia University economist Pierre-André Chiappori, I have synthesized its findings into ten propositions. Almost all top economists—those who are recognized as such by their peers and who publish in the leading scientific journals—would endorse them (the exceptions are those like Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, whose public pronouncements are more political than scientific). The more the public understands and embraces these propositions, the more prosperous the world will become."
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POPSHow much is $1 Trillion dollars..? Iraq will be a $3 Trillion dollar War..Stiglitz says we have already spent if you consider the cost of caring for those already seriously wounded $1.4 Trillion at least..
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POPSHow much are you paying for this war? If every family knew they would have to each pay near $50,000 for the Iraq war, Bush's approval rating might be at ZERO right now. At 25% approval rating, those 25% are still clueless how much this war is costing our country. The Outstanding Public Debt as of NOW is: $9,354,811,947,563 making each citizen's share $30,777. I'm not sure if it's worth it or not, but at least we ought to know that there's more fiscal malfeasance than ever.
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POPSUSA paralyzed by Iraq Like Johnson's "Great Society", which fell over Vietnam, a host of domestic issues go un-addressed, as $3 trillion goes to Iraq
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POPSThe $2 trillion Nightmare Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits.
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POPSIraq...Dollar...Euro...Oil ....join dots.... "The war was now the second-most expensive in US history after World War II and the second-longest after Vietnam, he said. "A few days' funding would be enough to provide health insurance for US children who were not covered, he said. "The public had been encouraged by the White House to ignore the costs of the war because of the belief that the war would somehow pay for itself or be paid for by Iraqi oil or US allies.
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POPSGlobal Peace Index "The Global Peace Index is intended to contribute significantly to the public debate and highlight the relationship between Global Peace and Sustainability. Because, how will we achieve the necessary global co-operation to reverse global warming, loss of bio-diversity, provide adequate drinking water and a sustainable population without peace?"
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POPSCost of Iraq War Consider, for example, that the value of one EPA, the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, is about $7.5 billion. The cost of the Iraq War is thus more than a century's worth of EPA spending (in today's dollars), almost 130 EPAs, only a small handful of which would probably have been sufficient to clean up Superfund sites around the country.
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