Speech-acts don’t impress me so much anymore. Nor do websites. Or rallies. Cucking Stool reminds us of the real cost of the continuation of the clusterfuck that is Iraq, and it’s hefty:

Nobel Economics Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and his co-author, Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, have estimated the total cost of the war, just to the United States, to be three to four trillion dollars. The rest of the world will pay similar amount. They wrote a book called The Three Trillion Dollar War, but that estimate is apparently out of date, although the book just came out:

All of the war-price tallies include operations in the war zone, support for troops, repair or replacement of equipment, reservists’ salaries, special combat pay for regular forces and some care for wounded veterans — expenses that typically fall outside the regular Defense Department or Veterans Affairs budgets.

The highest estimates often include projections for future operations, long-term health care and disability costs for veterans, a portion of the regular, annual defense budget, and, in some cases, wider economic effects, including a percentage of higher oil prices and the impact of raising the national debt to cover increased war spending.

The debate raging on Capitol Hill, on the presidential campaign trail, in research institutes and in academia touches on such esoteric factors as the right inflation index for veterans’ health care costs; the monetary value of nearly 4,000 soldiers killed; and what role, if any, the war has had in higher oil prices.

Some economists who track the war expenses say they worry that politicians are making mistakes similar to those made in 2002, by failing to fully come to grips with the short- and long-term financial costs.

“The relevant question now is: what do we do now going forward? Because we can’t do anything about the costs that have already happened,” said Scott Wallsten, an economist and vice president of research with iGrowthGlobal, a Washington research institute. “We still don’t hear people talking about that.”

In discussions about the economy, the elephant - boy, is that an apt metaphor - in the room is the war. The national debt has soared, as has the price of oil, and the dollar has plunged. The Fed keeps throwing “liquidity” on the fire; it seems to help for a little while - at least in terms of buoying the stock market - but only for a little while. As the Fed accepts dodgey-er and dodgey-er debt as collateral, the prospect that the taxpayer is going to foot the bill becomes more and more inevitable.

Privatize the profits and socialize the losses!

It seems to me that none of the candidates are speaking plainly about what all this means. I won’t say I know exactly what it means for our economy, but I am fairly sure that social programs are going to suffer, and indeed they already are. I anticipate other, extreme and major adjustments to our way of life as well. That’s what happens when there is no money to pay for things like roads and schools. Civilization declines.

Like the Shitpile, eventually people are going to be forced to deal with this reality. The cost of the invasion/occupation and Shitpile together will destroy, excuse me, has destroyed the economic foundation of this country. Our “leaders” are ignoring this fact because the full bill and hard choices related to it are still in a future they don’t have to think about. But pretending won’t make the future go away. Tough, thoughtful policy of the type FDR brought us will barely be enough to fix the mess, if it can be fixed at all. Frankly, very little of the proposed policy I’ve heard and read approaches the correct mindset needed. From any of the candidates.

But who cares, right? Let’s talk about preachers some more. It’s so much more fun than planning for a harsh reality rushing towards us like a runaway freight train. In this, we are as guilty as our pols, because we don’t demand from them that they use all that speech-act time for things that actually matter. I want policy specifics with hard numbers and a clear economic plan. One that actually accounts ALL of the debt Bush and his Dem “we don’t have the votes” enablers brought us.