Economist Stiglitz Says Iraq War Costs May Reach $5 Trillion

[babylonsister]

Economist Stiglitz Says Iraq War Costs May Reach $5 Trillion
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2008-03-04 18:34.

* Evidence

By Vivien Lou Chen and Thomas Keene, Bloomberg


March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz, author of a new book that claims the Iraq war will cost the U.S. more than $3 trillion, said the final tally is likely to climb much higher than that.

``It's much more like five trillion,'' Stiglitz said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg Radio. ``We were trying to make Americans understand how expensive this war was so we didn't want to quibble about a dime here or a dime there.''

His analysis comes as the Senate debates a Democratic plan to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. The 2001 Nobel winner's initial estimate of $3 trillion drew criticism from Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who said that the number ignores the price the U.S. would pay if Iraq became a terrorist state.

``Three trillion is a lot of money no matter how you look at it,'' said Stiglitz, 65, a former economics adviser to President Bill Clinton. The conflict has driven the nation's energy costs higher by adding $5 to $10 to the price of a barrel of oil, and may enlarge the national debt by $2 trillion in the year 2017, he said.

``This war is the first war ever that's been totally financed by borrowing, by deficits,'' said Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University in New York. ``Because we haven't raised taxes, because we've tried to pretend this war is for free, we've been skimping on our treatment of veterans.''

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[Joanne98]

1. It's that something. k&r

[babylonsister]

2. Yea, what's $5 Trillion. After a certain amount of zeroes, it's

impossible to compute for me.

[sutz12]

3. You can pretty much pick any number you want..

It depends on how long we stay with it. If we do like McBush wants and stay there 100 years, I'm sure it'll be in the quadrillions.

[AntiFascist]

4. K&R, everyone who gave Bush permission to declare war....

preemptively is also to blame for this.

[OneBlueSky]

5. a trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talkin' real money . . . n/t

.