Very Scary Chart

Posted by | January 27, 2009 | Uncategorized | One Comment

Federal borrowing till end of 2007:
debt

Federal borrowing till end of 2008:
debt2

This comes with the following scary statistic:

“The cost of the bailout ($4.6165 trillion) exceeds the inflation adjusted cost of the Marshall Plan, New Deal, S&L Bailout, Nasa’s Lifetime Budget, the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars and also the Lousiana Purchase, combined ($3.92 trillion). “

The don’t panic argument comes from the fact that the above sentence doesn’t include the WWII spending which resulted in a similar debt as a percentage of GDP, and things worked out OK for the US.

The problem is that the US was more like China, at the end of WWII, essentially a creditor nation that made things for the rest of the world.

The bottom line is that the best we can hope for here is a period of very aggressive inflation as a global recovery starts. All the more reason to reduce dependence of oil during this respite from inflation.

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  • […] David Galbraith’s Blog — Very Scary Chart “The cost of the bailout ($4.6165 trillion) exceeds the inflation adjusted cost of the Marshall Plan, New Deal, S&L Bailout, Nasa’s Lifetime Budget, the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars and also the Lousiana Purchase, combined ($3.92 trillion)." — Hockey stick. inflation fraud debt economics […]