Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist

[Phrogman]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1681119,00.html

The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expanded on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war.

The report came during one of the most deadly periods in Iraq since the invasion, with the US military yesterday revising upwards to 11 the number of its troops killed during a wave of insurgent attacks on Thursday. More than 130 civilians were also killed when suicide bombers struck Shia pilgrims in Karbala and a police recruiting station in Ramadi.

The paper on the real cost of the war, written by Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard budget expert, is likely to add to the pressure on the White House on the war. It also followed the revelation this week that the White House had scaled back ambitions to rebuild Iraq and did not intend to seek funds for reconstruction.

[bananas]

1. Stiglitz - The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold

For people who don't know about Stiglitz...

http://www.gregpalast.com/the-globalizer-who-came-in-from-the-cold

The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold
Published by Greg Palast October 10th, 2001 in Articles

JOE STIGLITZ: TODAY’S WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS

by Greg Palast

The World Bank’s former Chief Economist’s accusations are eye-popping - including how the IMF and US Treasury fixed the Russian elections

“It has condemned people to death,” the former apparatchik told me. This was like a scene out of Le Carre. The brilliant old agent comes in from the cold, crosses to our side, and in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of a political ideology he now realizes has gone rotten.

And here before me was a far bigger catch than some used Cold War spy. Joseph Stiglitz was Chief Economist of the World Bank. To a great extent, the new world economic order was his theory come to life.

I “debriefed” Stigltiz over several days, at Cambridge University, in a London hotel and finally in Washington in April 2001 during the big confab of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing the meetings of ministers and central bankers, Stiglitz was kept exiled safely behind the blue police cordons, the same as the nuns carrying a large wooden cross, the Bolivian union leaders, the parents of AIDS victims and the other ‘anti-globalization’ protesters. The ultimate insider was now on the outside.

<snip>

[whistle]

3. If the new world economic order is Stiglitz's theory come to life, then just

....maybe it is his free trade economic globalization theory which has been rotten all along, eh. Economic alliances with long term fair trade aggreements worked out with mutual benefits to the cultural societies involved should be the foundation for sound economic theory, not profit maximization, exploitation, class structure and imperial dominance.

[entanglement]

2. Stiglitz is one of the few 'establishment' economists with a conscience

He has written a book exposing the misdeeds of the IMF and has clashed with World Bank bosses in the past (which ultimately led to his expulsion from the World Bank). Not a leftist, but a powerful, authoritative voice against the economic elite nonetheless.

[ClintonTyree]

4. I don't think a person needs to be a Nobel winning economist....

to figure that out. Anyone with half a brain who lives in a reality based world can see the handwriting on the wall about the total cost of Bush's folly.

Imagine, if you can, what GOOD that amount of money could have done within our own borders. Instead, our pResident spends it on destruction and death, America's only real export these days.

I'm sincerely grateful that I'm closer to the end of my lifetime than the beginning. The damage and destruction our "great" country is causing is appalling. More often than not I'm ashamed to be an American.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. That is one expensive cakewalk. And I also believe that could be a

lowball figure. When you have private contractors like Halliburton with their creative accounting, there's no telling how expensive their services and materials could be without oversight.

[indepat]

6. $2 trillion: such a small price to pay to bring the Iraqis democracy and freedom, to wit steal

their oil.