Subject: Re: Decent real estate agent, and a good broker, too
From: vmenkov@cs.indiana.edu (Vladimir Menkov)
Date: 1997/06/29
Message-ID: <5p66hu$bsp@loanshark.cs.indiana.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if
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>In article <19970627062501.CAA15335@ladder02.news.aol.com>, DBurch7670
><dburch7670@aol.com> writes
>>What if Napoleon or Czar Alexander had one, and/or refused to sell
>>Louisiana or Alaska, respectively, to the U.S?
In OTL the US gov't paid $7,200,000 (seven million two hundred
thousand dollars) for Alaska when it bought the territory in the
1860's. (Although only $7,000,000 of these money ever got to the
London bank where czar had his credit card account; the rest was spent
on things like fees to the telegraph company for transmitting the text
of the treaty and probably, eh, tips to the members of Congress voting
the right way).
Assuming that Alexander II had decided not to sell Alaska, or that
Congress had decided not to follow "Seward's folly" and not to buy
"Walrussia", how could the US gov't have spent the money instead?
Suppose the Congress, in a rather atypical mood had decided to take the
same $7.2 M and, instead of spending it for "the icebox", put it into
a special reserve fund, invested it into stocks and corporate
bonds. Historically, stock market returns have been around 10% per
year over the long term. Assuming also that the gov't does not tax the
fund (after all, it is a gov't agency) nor withdraw any assets from it
(as a result of rather unusual forgetfulness), the value of the fund
would grow over the 130 years by the factor of 1.10^130 = 240,000,
reaching some $1,700 billion now.
This sounds like a lot of money, but really this is only about 1/3 of
the US national debt as it stands now. So if the gov't suddenly
remembered of the money and decided to apply it to the debt, it'
wouldn't wipe out more than 1/3 of it.
--vld.
