Quantifying Economic Costs of the September 11 Attacks

From David Wessel, at Wall Street Journal, "Tallying the Toll on the Economy From 9/11":

Osama bin Laden vowed to bleed America "to the point of bankruptcy, Allah willing." He failed. The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks were enormously costly to the U.S., though not in the ways expected initially.



Sept. 11 did not, as feared, trigger a wrenching recession; the bursting of the housing bubble was worse. And despite lines at airport security, Sept. 11 did not dent the efficiency of the U.S. economy; productivity kept growing.



But Sept. 11 did cost a lot in other ways. The attacks led to Afghanistan and Iraq, wars that already have cost nearly twice what Vietnam did, adjusted for inflation.



Putting a price tag on the human toll from 9/11 is impossible. Nearly 3,000 were killed in the attacks. More than 6,200 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Measuring the impact of 9/11 on the American psyche and its sense of security and freedom is difficult.



But one can, with the hindsight of a decade, begin to tally the quantifiable economic costs.

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