Duncan Green puts the bailout in an international perspective:
To put the proposed Wall Street bailout into perspective.
$700bn:
* Would clear the accumulated debt of the 49 poorest countries in the world ($375bn) twice over
* Is almost 5 times the annual amount of extra aid needed to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals on poverty, health, education etc ($150bn a year)
* Is about 7 years of current global aid levels ($104bn in 2007)
* Is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years (UNDP calculates it would take $300bn to get the entire world population over the $1 a day poverty line).On the other hand it’s:
* only a quarter of the cost of the Iraq war ($3 trillion on Joseph Stiglitz’ calculation )
* a half of annual global military spending ($1339 bn)
A lovely teaching tool for the concept of opportunity cost.
A dollar bill is 0.0043 inches thick. So...
$700 Billion is a pile of dollar bills (stacked neatly, not "end to end") 47,500 miles high.
That's about 1/5 of the way to the moon.