Matthew Yglesias comes to a stunning realization on the military budget as juxtaposed against their financial crisis:

The thing about military spending that I don’t think is properly understood is the extent to which if it’s not necessary it’s truly wasteful. Building a mag-lev train from Chicago to Milwaukee would be a “waste of money” but if you did it, the resulting train would still be useful to people and lead to some increased value. But a tank you don’t need just does nothing. An extra brigade of soldiers consumes resources and doesn’t produce anything. Of course if your tanks and soldiers produce “Nazis don’t conquer Europe” then it’s valuable indeed. But if you don’t need them, you really don’t need them.

(emphasis original)

Matt was talking about Greece and Turkey, but looking at the bigger picture makes one wonder why the biggest debtor in the world, the United States of America, is well served by spending nearly as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.