Econ. Nobel Prize winner examines Iraq war costs

The United States could be feeling the costs of the Iraq War for years to come, according to 2001 Nobel Prize winner and Columbia economics professor Joseph Stiglitz.

Stiglitz addressed those costs - which total $3 trillion - in a lecture to students at College Hall yesterday.

"That's more money than you will ever make in your life. Social Security, those kinds of problems, could be fixed with a fraction of what we've spent so far in Iraq," he said.

According to Stiglitz, pre-war estimates pegged spending at $50 billion.

"The Bush response to our figures is that 'war costs money,'" he said. "He doesn't challenge our calculations, and his departments admit that they severely underestimated what this war is costing us."

After the war, the greatest expenditures will be replacing the depleted supply of equipment, which could cost up to $3 billion, and paying for disabled troops for the rest of their lives.

In his lecture, which focused on The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, the book that he co-authored with Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, Stiglitz also addressed the less-obvious issues that the United States will face in the long term.

"This is the first war where we went in with a deficit and still gave tax cuts," he said. "We'll be paying interest. We'll be paying interest on the interest. And we'll have to pay back all the money we borrowed, most of which came from China."

Stiglitz said the current economic crisis might have happened even without the Iraq War, but "the Iraq situation has contributed in no small measure to the problem."

His book makes two major policy recommendations: better accounting in the future "to keep costs as low as possible" and changes in the way we treat our wounded and disabled troops. He said we need to set money aside immediately to deal with these issues.

According to Eileen Doherty-Sil, the undergraduate coordinator for the Political Science department, the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics hosts the Rena and Angelius Anspach Lecture each year.

The center aims to bring distinguished policy makers shaping international affairs today to Penn.

Stiglitz was chosen because many undergraduates have read his books in their classes. Doherty-Sil said "dozens" of students have told her that Stiglitz's work has dramatically influenced their understanding of the international political economy.

College freshman Maria-jose Lamadrid said she enjoyed the talk.

"I like that he gave an unbiased explanation of the issues in simple terms," she said. "When he talked about some of the crazy expenditures-like paying to ship sand from Kuwait to Iraq-and the mishandling of money, it made his talk much more enjoyable."

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