$8.5 Trillion And Counting; Cost Of U.S. Economic Crisis Soars
The impact of the global economic and financial crisis on the United States has already cost potentially $8.5 trillion. Perhaps even more frightening, many more trillions of dollars could be added to the economic rescue bill, without certainty of success. Indeed, some economists are saying the U.S. is doomed to a horrific economic depression, no matter how much money the government borrows or prints.
In the past week the government allocated up to $300 billion to save Citigroup from certain implosion claiming that it was “too big to fail.”. This allocation, added to $150 billion and counting for AIG, more for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other expenditures and loan guarantees currently add up to a staggering $8.5 trillion. This is more than half the entire U.S. gross domestic product in the past year.
President-elect Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are planning an additional stimulus package of $500 billion to $700 billion. It is expected that the stimulus package will be one of the first bills passed by Congress after Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation’s 44th president.
The United States federal budget deficit soared to $455 billion in the past fiscal year. With the bailout packages already enacted and additional spending being planned, economists are forecasting that the next fiscal year’s budget deficit could exceed one trillion dollars, a figure which would have defied belief only a year ago.