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It costs $4,000 a second for the American taxpayer to keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is approximately a million times more than the average wage in the US.
But when the public is used to hearing billions and trillions tossed about as if they were telephone numbers, the likelihood is that even this figure will just be shrugged off as if it was not important.
Yet it is important, for it is obvious there is no end in sight or a chance of the US withdrawing from Iraq or Afghanistan any time soon. With the war costs hovering in the region of over $500 billion, it is vitally important that Americans understand exactly what it is that is dragging their economy down while simultaneously losing the US much credibility in the eyes of the world.
It has long been recognised that the US drives the global economy. For that reason successive US governments have thought it acceptable to dictate terms to other nations in all manner of areas, in the belief that politics is business, and business is politics, the two being closely intertwined.
Certainly when a country's economy is in dire straits, even if due to external forces, it is the government in power that gets the blame, as UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has just learnt to his cost.
The possibility of the US pulling out of Iraq soon became even more remote last week, when rumours went around the oil market that Iraq had discovered vast oil reserves that put it way ahead of Saudi Arabia.
Whether it was a rehash of an old story, or a new one, has not been tracked down yet, but it does put a different perspective on the US involvement in Iraq, especially with the US government seeking an extra $165 billion for fresh war funds.
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