It’s getting increasingly difficult to simply imagine the amount of money the federal government is committing to get us out of the financial crisis.
Barry Ritholtz tries to put it in context by comparing it to the cost of previous big ticket government expenditures:
• 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
According to his estimate, the government has pledged $4.6165 trillion for this bailout. On Monday Bloomberg reported the government is prepared to make $7.76 trillion available to deal with the crisis.
Whatever the total, it’s almost an unimaginable sum.
UPDATE: Full post on Barry’s blog.