Hacker News Reader

Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Am I not mistaken in saying that the USA has gotten the new afghan government to pay all the war costs in the form of issuing sovereign bonds?

Those bonds may stay outstanding for decades or even centuries, but if afghanistan is ever successful in the future, they will end up paying for the whole war plus interest.

View on HN

I've not heard anything to that effect, and I don't see any indication of that. Another article with no mention of it: https://newrepublic.com/article/155168/real-costs-war-afghan...

I'd be shocked if Afghanistan would ever be able to repay that amount of money.

It sounds very unlikely to me that the Afghan government would be able and willing to borrow that much money to pay the US. But perhaps you have a source for your claim?

I wonder, how has that worked in the past?

Beyond that, what's the rate of return relative to any other investment we might have made with $2 trillion?

For comparison, what would it cost to eradicate hunger? Estimated at about $30 billion a year. I wonder what that would have meant?

It did sort of work for Germany and the First World War.

Do you have a source for that claim? Because that's so absurd I think it must've come from one of Trump's 3 AM tweets. Afghanistan is never going to have $2T to give to the United States, and even if they did, they would rather just default on the bonds instead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com