Have you ever Seen the 1 Billion dollar US Embassy in Iraq?

I don’t know how I missed this morsel, but I heard someone mention the size of the US embassy in Iraq today, and immediately went to the net to do a search for more details. What I found boggled my mind. In today’s day of rampant spending, and entitlement programs run wild, it takes quite a bit to shock me. Well I was shocked, and pissed off to find that the US embassy in Iraq is the absolute epitome of spending money on something that is not needed.

Here are the details and some photographs of the embassy. And by the way, President Barack Obama has nothing to do with this, as this one rests solely on the shoulders of President George Bush.

The Stats on the US Embassy

The 104-acre compound, bigger than the Vatican and about the size of 80 football fields, boasts 21 buildings, a commissary, cinema, retail and shopping areas, restaurants, schools, a fire station, power and water treatment plants, as well as telecommunications and wastewater treatment facilities.

The compound is six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York, and two-thirds the size of the National Mall in Washington.

It has space for 1,000 employees with six apartment blocks and is 10 times larger than any other U.S. embassy.

“The presence of a massive U.S. embassy— by far the largest in the world — co-located in the Green Zone with the Iraqi government is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country,” the International Crisis Group, a European-based research group, said in 2006.

“The idea of an embassy this huge, this costly, and this isolated from events taking place outside its walls is not necessarily a cause for celebration,” architectural historian Jane Loeffler wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2007.

“Traditionally, at least, embassies were designed to further interaction with the community in which they were built,” she wrote. “Although the U.S. Government regularly proclaims confidence in Iraq’s democratic future, the U.S. has designed an embassy that conveys no confidence in Iraqis and little hope for their future. Instead, the U.S. has built a fortress capable of sustaining a massive, long-term presence in the face of continued violence.”

The U.S. National Debt Blows my Mind

I was goofing around on the internet this evening, and decided to check out the ridiculous amount of national debt that we are taking on now a days. Since we obviously have no regard for any type of fiscal responsibility, I decided to post this real time U.S. National Debt clock in this entry. It is only through seeing a visual illustration like this to really drive home the point of just how large the debt balloon has gotten.

Other National Debt Facts

The estimated population of the United States is 308,195,598

so each citizen’s share of this debt is $41,649.14.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$4.12 billion per day since September 28, 2007!

And Even More Debt Items to Consider

Maturity of U.S. debt ranges from less than a year to over 20 years, with the average maturity about 3 years. More than half of the debt, however, is short term, maturing in less than a year.”

This means that if rates on 3 month T-bills went to just 1% (), interest on just this short-term financed HALF of our debt would increase by a factor of at least 5 times, by the end of the year. Interest on half of 11.9 trillion (6 trillion) at .2% was about 12 billion. Five times that is 60 billion. If rates went to just 2%, the interest owed on this short-term financed HALF of our debt, would be 120 billion by the end of a single year. All other maturities would increase by greater percentages depending on the time length of the instruments. Since Moody’s recently announced they are considering downgrading their rating on U.S. debt, could rates skyrocket to banana republic levels?

T-bill rate table – We haven’t seen T-bill rates this low since the early 1940’s.

Historical Performance of the T-Bill

Based on the chart to the right,  is it reasonable to expect our rates will remain at 70 year lows? How long will the Fed have the ability to remain in control of these ridiculously low rates, and when will market forces take over, setting rates to levels commensurate with an increasing perception that our nation will be unable to repay our debt?
All this while the Fed launches a feeble effort to head off a universal banking failure, and more importantly a money collapse, resulting from the unwinding of the phony money driven asset and real estate bubbles. The spike in interest rates in the charts above is what happened the last time we had democrats in complete control of our government under Jimmy Carter. If T-bill rates went to the Jimmy Carter 15% today, our annual interest expense, on just that short-term financed HALF of our debt, would rise to over 900 billion dollars – PER YEAR.

A billion dollars just isn’t a very trendy term anymore.

The new norm for today’s spending barometer is measuring the deficit in trillions, not billions. After all, in todays day and age of extreme sports and general sensationalism, isn’t a trillion dollars a much bigger shock factor?

Lost to most is the fact that they are absolutely numbed to the reality of what even a billion dollars entails. I have to admit that the term billion had lost much meaning to me as well, until this weekend while watching football. The Cowboys were on TV, and they were showing a special on the Cowboy’s new stadium, which boasts the largest television screen and scoreboard on earth, and is home to so many luxuries, it seems more at home in the pre-debt collapse country of Dubai.

So what was the price tag for the Cowboys new ultra modern home? The answer to that question is that it cost 1.1 billion dollars to buy the land and build the stadium with the most extravagant amenities in the world. So what is my point in this example?

You could buy 1400 Cowboys stadiums each year with the amount of the deficit

My point is that you could build nearly 1400 Cowboys stadiums each year with the equivalent of the current federal deficit. When you take this number and divide it by the 50, you quickly figure out that you could build 28 Cowboy domes in each and every state in the union. Now that puts things in perspective fairly quickly, but don’t forget that the 1.4 Trillion dollars is above and beyond the 3 trillion or so that is already in the budget. Now that my friends, is an example of government waste.

All of this data makes the following headline in today’s news just that much harder to stomach.

Today Congress approved an additional $290 Billion to get us through the next 6 weeks

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation giving the federal government the ability to borrow a whopping $290 billion to finance its operations for just six additional weeks.

The 218-214 vote sends the must-pass bill to the Senate, which is expected to approve it as its last act before adjourning for the year. The alternative would be a market-rattling, first-ever default on U.S. obligations.

The measure is needed as a result of the out-of-control budget deficit, which registered $1.4 trillion for the budget year that ended in September. The current debt ceiling is $12.1 trillion and is set to be reached by Dec. 31.

Democrats had hoped to pass a far larger increase of almost $2 trillion to avoid another vote before next year’s midterm elections — and to wrap the increase into the popular defense appropriations bill to give some political cover.

Oh, how I wish that I billion dollars by itself was still shocking.

Electric Car Loophole is Prime Example of Taxpayer Waste

I had heard about this tax loophole this fall, but wrote it off as a financial version of an urban myth. However, I am sitting here watching John Stossel’s show, and out he comes in a brand new golf cart.

The deal is that there is a $6500 tax credit for people who purchase electric cars. However, you just can’t underestimate the ingenuity of the American public because these golf cart dealers have dropped the price of their vehicles to $6500, thereby creating a “free” golf cart promotion.

Great.

Is this electric cart environmentally friendly?

That is a great way to waste money. Wouldn’t we be better off say……not spending money subsidizing golf carts? Or is this some way of evening the playing field, by letting the poor have something typically enjoyed by those evil rich golfers? Personally, if I could get the $500 bucks per month, I would rather put that towards something like…….say……paying for my own healthcare?

One last thing about electric vehicles in general is that they are misconstrued as having a positive impact on the environment. However, this wouldn’t be further from the truth. After all, the very electricity that is used to charge these vehicles had to come from some type of source. Power is generated in large part by coal burning plants that use more energy to make electricity than the very cars they support.

Here is a quick video that displays this most recent example of government waste at its finest!

.

.