Iraq war cost around 1 to 2 trillion dollars ? Proping up the the failed banks in 2008 cost as much.
If you can just print the money(or add zeros in computer systems ) it's not that expensive.
That question mark is not really necessary.
I recall when an economist said, as the war was ramping up, that the cost will be in the trillions. The wise guys in the Bush administration and the military said he was yapping out of the back of his neck. They put the final cost at a few hundred billion.
Turns out the guy was right.
His math included the cost of taking care the vets. That part of the cost will keep going up until all the vets are all dead.
Meanwhile, we're back in Iraq in some fashion.
They actually put the cost at $50-60 billion.[1]
I recall members of the Bush admin telling requesting Congress to fund the war to the tune of $50 billion, that the cost to America wasn't going to be more than that and that because Iraq has oil, the rest of the cost will come from Iraqi oil revenue.
Not too long after that, if I recall correctly, they came back for another $75 billion (?) or so. And that was not the last time.
You hear that number trillion dollars so often that you become numb to it, but the annual tax revenue for u.s. was somewhere around 2.8 trillion.
Just imagine that. 90 million working Americans, from poor to filthy rich, working entire year, some paying quarter or third of their earnings, some companies paying billions in tax. And still amount amount to less than $3 trillion.
http://www.newsproject.org/node/181/
All the consolidation meant that banks gained a lot of money, and the US government bought debt $1 for $1. Instead of TARP, the US government could have done something for...the people you know? The attorney general could have pushed prosecuting all the people who committed fraud (forging income documents for home loans was rampant, lying to people about home loans, etc.) from the top to the bottom. Banks should have been forced to sell loans back to consumers for quarters on the dollar (you know, what the homes were actually worth now).
We saved some retirement accounts, and everyone above 50 at the time was very thankful for that, but young people lost their homes, tons of money and the banks didn't take a hit at all. They just got stronger and swallowed other banks.
I don't think it can truly be said that TARP turned profit[...]
And it is impossible to know profitability of securities without
knowing their Sharpe ratio,
your statement is good, but only in hindsight. we didnt have that forethought before the crash. its a useless statement.
Sorry to go meta and off-topic, but I'm curious about this sort of sentence because I seem to be seeing it more and more. It seems like you're making a statement, but then it is finished with a question mark. Are you asking whether the statement is true? I don't think so. My interpretation, which I think is based on similar things in colloquial speech, is that you're implying a question like, "you know that the Iraq war cost around 1 to 2 trillion dollars, right?". Is that how this is meant? Is there a name for this sort of statement-question?
> But Iraq war cost around 1 to 2 trillion dollars, right?