By Steve Watson

The amount of US taxpayer money committed to bailouts over the last 12 months by far exceeds the combined cost of major historical events dating back over 200 years.

The combined amount spent, lent, consumed, borrowed, printed, guaranteed, assumed or otherwise committed to bailouts by the government from March 2008 to March 2009 amounts to some $15 TRILLION.

To emphasize how much money that is, the producers of the book Bailout Nation, put together the following graphic, which illustrates how almost every large one time expenditure of the US over the last 206 years is a drop in the ocean compared with the current level of spending.

The cost of World War Two, the race to the moon, the New Deal, and the Iraq, Vietnam and Korean wars combined does not come close to the amount spent so far in just 12 months on the bailout of a handful of privately owned offshore corporations.

Click for enlargement:

The graphic is based on the following inflation adjusted figures, put together by Bianco Research President James Bianco:

That amounts to $11 TRILLION+ less than the cost of the financial crisis so far.

The only event in US history that gets anyway near the current level of spending is World War Two, which originally cost $288 billion, $3.6 trillion according to Bianco’s inflation adjustment figures.

That means that the most expansive and encompassing military venture in human history still cost the US taxpayer over four times less, during a six year period, than the “rescue” of a select number of banks and financial institutions did in just one year.

If you still cannot imagine how much money we are talking about, watch the following clip which shows you what just $1 TRILLION looks like:

Now multiply that by fifteen.

Now multiply that by sixty-five.

And so on…