I doubt if too many people close to the Wild West World bankruptcy were surprised today when the parent of Bank of Blue Valley became the first Kansas lender to collect bailout cash.
The Overland Park-based bank was one of the first financial institutions to jump into the bankruptcy, as a lender for the failed theme park’s rides.
With a $21.75 million taxpayer transfusion, it would appear that the bank’s had issues beyond a theme park with no real business plan.
Here’s how the $4.6 trillion promised by the federal government – so far – stacks up against some of the biggest projects in American history, in today’s dollars:
Marshall Plan $115.3 billion
Louisiana Purchase $217 billion
Savings & Loan Crisis $256 billion
Korean War $454 billion
The New Deal $500 billion
Invasion of Iraq $597 billion
Vietnam War $698 billion
NASA $851 billion
This courtesy of Bill Greiner, chief investment officer at UMB, who cites Bianco Research. He cautions that some of the money spent may actually be investments with returns and that the amounts don’t reflect their size compared to the size of the government budget (U.S. GDP is about $14 trillion).
Still, he says, the bailout is massively enormous. Here’s one more Greiner stat: bailout is costing $15,330 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.
H-Line Conversions’ Johnathan Goodwin, the Wichita man who is becoming well known for turning gas guzzlers into efficient, green machines, has received some more national recognition.
CBS Evening News‘ Hari Sreenivasan came to Wichita to do a story on Goodwin. Check out the story.