Iraq War is more expensive than you think
And the borrowed trillions have to come from somewhere. Because “the saving rate [in America] is zero,” says Stiglitz, “that means that you have to finance [the war] by borrowing abroad. So China is financing America’s war.” The US is now operating at such a deficit, in fact, that it doesn’t have the money to bail out its own banks. “When Merrill Lynch and Citibank had a problem, it was sovereign funds from abroad that bailed them out. And we had to give up a lot of shares of our ownership. So the largest shareowners in Citibank now are in the Middle East. It should be called the MidEast bank, not the Citibank.” This creates a precedent of dependence, “and whether we become dependent on Middle East oil money, or Chinese reserves – it’s that dependency that people ought to worry about. That is a big change. The amount of borrowing in the last eight years, on top of the borrowing that began with Reagan – that has all changed the US’s economic position in the world.”
- The War in Iraq is even more expensive than you think it is
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