Bail out more expensive than everything else ever expended put together. A historical perspective

[Dawn Meredith]

Barry Ritholtz puts the bailout figure into proper historical perspective, and it ain't pretty folks:

If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.
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 billionTOTAL: $3.92 trillion
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data courtesy of Bianco Research

You can read Ritholtz's whole post here. But we have to warn you, there really isn't an upside.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/108713/

I saw this on tv last night- Rachel Maddow- and had to change the station.
And it's just getting worse. I have little hope that Obama will call for a criminal investigation of Paulson (etc) as to where all the $ actually went. Not where they said it would go/do. LIARS! Thieves. Our government.
Dawn