Business Casual

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.