The Financial Crisis Cost More Than $14 Trillion: Dallas Fed Study
HUFFINGTON POST: …So how bad was it? Really, really bad: The economists say a “conservative” estimate of the damage is $14 trillion, or roughly one year’s U.S. gross domestic product. This is based on how much output was lost during the crisis and Great Recession, along with all the damage done to potential future economic growth.
This is a factoid worth keeping in mind the next time bank lobbyists and flaks warn, as they habitually do, that new rules and regulations could slow the U.S. economy. Will rules to safeguard the economy vaporize $14 trillion in GDP? No? Then they’re probably worth doing.
“Given our range of estimates, the tepid economic recovery, and the litany of other adverse effects stemming from the Second Great Contraction, we suggest that the total domestic cost is likely greater than the equivalent of an entire year’s output,” the Dallas Fed economists write. “Thus, it is crucial to identify the primary causes and implement effective policy to avoid future episodes whose magnitude could exceed even the staggering costs and consequences of the most recent financial crisis.”.. (more)
EDITOR: Almost all reputable economists – and NewsLanc – all but got down on our hands and knees and begged- yes begged- for greater fiscal stimulus from 2010 through 2012 but Republicans played to the ignorance of the population by disingenuously likening the national budget to a family’s and falsely decrying short term borrowing to get people back to work. So we didn’t spend the extra trillion; and failure to do so has extended the recovery period, destroyed countless lives, and cost at least an extra five trillion dollars.
The country is so damn ignorant and so mindlessly partisan that it is unable to take measures needed to prevent its rapid decline. And there isn’t a damn thing that those of us who know better can do about it. We could cry.
