Posted on 02/26/2003 7:42:58 AM PST by zefrog
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has begun telling the White House and Congress that defeating Iraq and occupying the country for six months could cost as much as $85 billion, according to sources — considerably more than what senior administration officials have been saying in public.
Combined with aid for regional allies such as Turkey, the price tag for the conflict could top the $100-billion mark, twice the war costs cited just last month by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and an amount that the White House dismissed as outlandish last fall.
And the tally could rise further. Indeed, some close to the process say war planners have no firm grip on the conflict's final costs, a fact that is causing consternation among administration policymakers as the nation edges closer to war.
"It's like watching numbers roll higher and higher on a slot machine," said one State Department official, who asked not to be named.
[...]
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
NEW YORK - Government experts say the financial toll of the terrorist attacks on New York City amounts to $33 billion to $36 billion in lost wages and business, property damage and cleanup.
The losses, estimated from October 2001 through June, include $7.8 billion the 2,795 people killed at the World Trade Center would have earned and $21.6 billion to clean up and replace the twin towers.
The report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, released Tuesday, appears in the November issue of the bank's Economic Policy Review.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attack "significantly reduced the productive potential of the New York City economy" and hit the airline, restaurant, hotel and financial services industries especially hard, the report said.
Those businesses alone accounted for 42,000 of the 51,000 private-sector jobs lost in the city in October 2001, the report said.
The financial services industry, with many businesses headquartered at the trade center, lost 12,000 jobs in October 2001, and an additional 6,000 jobs through June, the report said. The number of jobs at the city's two airports fell by about 20 percent.
The report calculated the lost income of the victims of the attacks by finding the average income of trade center employees - $127,000 a year - their average age, and estimating how much they would earn until they retired. The loss amounted to $2.8 million per worker.
The city lost an additional $3.6 billion to $6.4 billion in wages from job cuts and reduced hours in businesses like the restaurant industry, the report said. Studies showed some residents also smoked and drank more and became depressed after the attacks, which likely also cut productivity.
The cleanup and replacement costs for the World Trade Center includes a $1.4 billion estimate to replace a commuter rail hub destroyed underneath the center.
An $11.2 billion estimate to replace the trade center's two towers assumed officials "will essentially duplicate what existed before the attack." Six architects have issued competing proposals for developing the site and no conclusions have been reached.
Initial estimates a month after 9/11 were $105B, now they're $33B. I'll bet this $100B Iraq number is overstated, as well.
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