Expensive? You betcha

Courtesy of my friend Tex, a list of the top ten most expensive catastrophes in history:

10. The loss of the Titanic in 1912: $150 million
9. A tanker/car accident on the Autobahn in 2004: $358 million
8. The MetroLink crash in Los Angeles in 2008: $500 million
7. The crash of a B2 bomber on Guam in 2008: $1.4 billion
6. The Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989: $2.5 billion
5. The loss of the Piper Alpha oil rig in the UK in 1988: $3.4 billion
4. The explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986: $5.5 billion
3. The sinking of the Prestige off Galicia, Spain in 2002: $12 billion
2. The explosion of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003: $13 billion
1. The loss of the reactor at Chernobyl in 1986: $200 billion

But the winner, in both elapsed time and expended dollars: the money spent by the US Treasury to kickstart the economic recovery following the 2008 presidential election: two months and $800 billion...