If I had $700 Billion

I'd be rich!

OK, the Federal Government is prepared to spend about $2,300 for every person in the US on a bailout that may or may not work. Here's some other things we could do with the money:

1. Build 350 gigawatts of nuclear power generating stations. Palo Verde http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station cost a little under $6 billion to build three reactors that generate over 1 GW each. The ~100 GW we currently produce generates 20% of our electrical power, so this would put our nuclear power generation at 90% of our current electrical demands.

2. Build 7 space elevators. Dr. Bradley Edwards did a study and estimated the cost of an initial elevator at $20 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator_economics Let's assume he was low by a factor of 5 (not unheard of in R&D). We could lift 14 million kg per year into orbit with these and have a roughly ten-fold reduction in the cost per kilo lifted to orbit.

3. Build 80 nuclear powered aircraft carriers. The navy's CVN-21 program's first unit is expected to cost $8billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford_class_aircraft_carrier Let's say cost overruns on the first are compensated for somewhat by the economies of scale on later units. Related, a Virginia class SSN costs about $2.3 billion, a DDG-1000 will probably cost about $3 billion... you get the picture. We could buy an entire NAVY of several hundred ships for $700 billion.

4. Buy a year's worth of oil. We spend $650 billion/year on importing oil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States THAT ought to cut gas prices!

What would you do with $700 billion dollars?