no time this morning

[solarbird]

I can't do much this morning other than get out the door, but I want to point people at something elfs linked: Cory Doctorow's post on BoingBoing of Barry Ritholtz pointing out that the financial system bailout insanity outlay (now at US$4.62 trillion dollars, only a smallish fraction of which has been voted upon by Congress) is more than the cost of the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the Apollo Programme, the S&L Crisis, the Korean War, the New Deal, the Iraq invasion, the Vietnam War, and all of non-Apollo NASA - combined. And adjusted for inflation.

I haven't thought about this enough yet. But here's a link to the kind of thing that was going through my head a lot of yesterday morning, posted in response to comments.

eta: Greenwald talks about the complete lack of transparency and accountability in the Citibank bailout. He's not talking the economics, he's talking the politics of how this particular event in the ongoing chain of bailouts happened. Remember, you're paying for all this, eventually, to the tune of around $24,000/person. So far.

Comments

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the comparison is: we could bail out the banks...or practically rebuild the entire nation, AND have functioning colonies on the moon.

Certainly sounds like it.

Sheesh.