banana republic 2.0

Its been my thought for some time that our national economic, social, and military policy choices have increased the likelihood that we'll turn the USA into the world's biggest banana republic.   Certainly the current economic apocalypse might be a big step in that direction.  More on this topic, I'm sure.  For now, various outlets in the blogosphere have picked up this, I believe it originated with Barry Ritholtz.   Barry blogs at http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/

"In doing the research for the "Bailout Nation" book, I needed a way to put the dollar amounts into proper historical perspective. 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.  Crunching the inflation adjusted numbers, we find 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 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion"

UPDATE: here is another accounting: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/what_were_doing_--_and_spendin.php

wow - a new president-elect

I, for one, welcome our new overlords.

Watched Obama's victory speech upon winning the election.  Now the hard part begins, of course, but the historic nature of this election may give me an opportunity (for a time) to dial-back my customary cynicism - maybe we can make some needed progress.

It is about the future of course, and I hope this election opens the door to addressing problems in a forward-looking and effective way, not in ideological terms related to political or cultural wars of the past that seem to live on in the mental frames of most of our political leaders.   The world is changing, in many ways, and prescriptions based on the model of "pick your favorite previous decade" won't cut it.  We have to identify new approaches.

Anyway, most of the prediction markets and/or related polling site have been pretty accurate for some time.  Interestingly most news outlets seemed to consistenly position the race as closer than it really ever was.