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Um, US GDP is actually about $14T per year. It's our annual fiscal deficit that approaches $2T per year (more, if the $233B deficit that Obama ran up for February 2011 is the run rate for the year).



Yeah, that whole post on the economics of oil I did was fucked up. I was typing shit in and telling myself not to type it in because I wasn't current on a lot of it.

I think I got the $2T number because that's how much the federal government takes in in revenues yearly.

Did way too much browsing on the issue last night. Clearest thing I found was an economics professor's blog equating losing Libya oil mean we could lose 0.5% of GDP growth. Click

I'm not going to link all this stuff, because I didn't save all the links. But Iraq has significantly more oil than Libya and so would have a much bigger effect on our GDP. Iraq thinks they can ramp oil production up to similar levels as what Saudi Arabia is doing now. And, Saudi Arabia has "8 times the oil production of Libya": Click (that's a shitty link, but can't find the better BBC one I had right now...)

So, last year there was a number floating around saying we had spent $800 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Say it's $900 billion now. Then we've spent more on Iraq than Afghanistan, so guess $600 billion?

With a $15T per year GDP, people who are interested can do the math to get the fraction Wallbanger asks for. Considering how up in arms this country gets over temporary recessions, something as lasting as what our oil supply, it the fraction significant to me.

But no, adding even significant amounts of oil to global supplies shouldn't be a driving reason to go to war. But, I could easily see how frictions related to the oil supply would lead to war.. It's just something that should be considered when your looking at whether or not to go.