Friday, February 22, 2008

Guns to caviar index

If your not familiar with the guns to caviar index, it's a study that compares the sale of fighter jets to the sale of private jets. It's usually a direct coorelation to whether the economy is good or bad depending on which sale of jets is higher. Well, we now can add a new category to the index.


UPDATE: Naomi Klein writes of this index in her book The Shock Doctrine. Unfortunately, the index is becoming a moot point in the last couple of years due to the fact that waging war is actually an amazing way to make money. For some. Others not so much.


An estimated $350 billion is spent on government contracts annually, according to the White House office of Federal Procurement Policy. With money going to contractors and subcontractors, both foreign and based in the United States, experts say it's nearly impossible to pinpoint how much of it is spent overseas.