Several thousands an hour is a bit of a stretch, maybe you meant monthly? but your point still stands.

For those interested: right now the largest instance I see is a u-12tb1.112xlarge (448 vCPUs, 12 TB RAM, 100 gb networking) which is ~$109/hr on demand or $40-80/hr with a 1-3 year commitment. This works out to ~$29k, ~$58k, or ~$79k per month.

If you don't need 12 TB of memory, there's a 6 TB instance for roughly half the cost.