News Magazine of the UW Department of Communication
Byline, Sue Yang
A Nobel Prize winning economist says the true cost of the Iraq War is between 3 and 5 trillion dollars.
But he says that it'll be American taxpayers who will be responsible for paying the tab.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz spoke at the University of Washington Bothell campus yesterday afternoon.
Stiglitz said that the entire Iraq War was funded on borrowed money.
He said that the Bush administration weakened the American economy by choosing to take on a massive loan, instead of raising taxes, or asking Americans to cut back on their oil use.
Stiglitz says the Federal Reserve created a consumption boom that temporarily distorted the United States' weakened economy.
They did this by lowering interest rates and increasing the amount of mortgages taken out on homes.
[We were spending so much money that the economy kept going. Bush would say, “Look, we have a prosperous economy.” But it was all based on a house of cards. It was all based on debt. We were living on borrowed money and borrowed time. It was just a matter of time before the day of reckoning happened.]
He also says that in addition to paying back the multi trillion dollar loan, taxpayers will also be responsible for paying 600-billion dollars a year in disability benefits for Iraq War veterans.
A cost, he says, that'll last for at least the next 50 years.
Stiglitz says that the cost of war extends beyond buying bullets and bombs.
[War is about men and women brutally killing and maiming other men and women. The cost live on long after the last shot has been fired.]
