WAR COST REVISIONS

(Via Atrios)

TPM Cafe has this excerpt:


A new study by two leading academic experts suggests that the costs of the Iraq war will be substantially higher than previously reckoned. In a paper presented to this week’s Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting in Boston MA., Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Columbia University Professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz calculate that the war is likely to cost the United States a minimum of nearly one trillion dollars and potentially over $2 trillion.

The Allied Social Sciences Association meeting is attended by the nation’s leading economists and social scientists. It is sponsored jointly by the American Economic Association and the Economists for Peace and Security.

Commenters provide references to other studies:

Fred Polvere:

In an Aug 20, 2005 New York Times OpEd, Linda Bilmes, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Commerce said the costs would be over a trillion.
"..if the American military presence in the region lasts another five years, the total outlay for the war could stretch to more than $1.3 trillion.”


anrig:

This American Enterprise Institute-Brookings study from September came up with a net present value cost to the US through 2015 of $604 billion.

JamesW:

William Nordhaus of Yale published an estimate of the cost of the war in the NYRB in in December 2002, well before it was launched, that came to a worst case of almost $2trn. The article is now behind a paywall. But you can get his figures and his technical paper here.