The Cost of the Bail Out

I ran across this sobering bit of research today:

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

The bailout including the most recent Citibank is $4.6165 trillion dollars.

Links (11/14/08)

From my regular trolling of the interwebs:

An immensely geeky site based on the scientific suppositions from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Really cool color pics from WWI.

Cracked details the worst places to get caught having sex.

How to turn you iPhone into a pan flute. [h/t Joan]

Spielberg and Will Smith are going to totally fuck up remake Korean cult classic Old Boy.

A member of the 20% of the population who likes Bush. [h/t Ted]

A disturbing video from ’50s hygiene films. You’ll never hear the phrase “blood comes out of my body through a hole between my legs” in quite the same way again.

50 top pop songs reduced to one sentence.

An interesting article from Salon about how America may be entering it’s “Fourth Republic.”

As I see it, to date there have been three American republics, each lasting 72 years (give or take a few years). The First Republic of the United States, assembled following the American Revolution, lasted from 1788 to 1860. The Second Republic, assembled following the Civil War and Reconstruction (that is, the Second American Revolution) lasted from 1860 to 1932. And the Third American Republic, assembled during the New Deal and the civil rights eras (the Third American Revolution), lasted from 1932 until 2004.

I don’t trust with this kind of history because a) it’s a bit glib, b) we don’t know what kind of president Obama is going to be (though I’d guess he’s going to be a pretty good one) and c) it’s really seductive.

Some really, really cool graffiti animation.

109 Year Old Daughter of a Slave Votes For Obama

This story is amazing, highlighting just how recent our sins of slavery were and how monumental an Obama presidency would be.

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country’s first black presidential nominee.

The rest of this story is here. {via Daily Kos]