The Star Wars galaxy is in for a catastrophic financial collapse and “economic depression of astronomical proportions” after the Rebel Alliance’s destruction of the Galactic Empire’s Death Star space stations.
That’s according to an academic paper published Tuesday by Washington University of St. Louis financial engineering professor Zachary Feinstein, who used economic modeling and systems risk analysis to predict the economic fallout from the Battle of Endor, when Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and the “scrappy underdogs” of the Rebel Alliance bring down Emperor Palpatine’s government and destroy the second Death Star at the end of Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
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Here’s the theory: Assuming, as Feinstein does, that the fiscally conservative Emperor kept his government’s overall debt load under control, the Empire probably still owed banks more than $500 quintillion (that’s 500 followed by eighteen zeros) for the Death Stars when they were destroyed. The only hope of warding off “sudden and catastrophic economic collapse” after the Empire’s fall is for the Rebel Alliance to fund a bailout of at least 15 percent of the entire galaxy’s resources—a sum, Feinsten says in the study, that the rebels simply do not have.
“The most surprising result was how large the economic collapse could be,” Feinstein said in a blog post on the university’s website. “Without a bailout, there was a non-negligible chance of over 30 percent drop in the size of the Galactic economy overnight—larger than the losses from the Great Depression over four years, from peak to trough.”
Feinstein built his economic model of the “galaxy far, far away” based on the real-life $17.5 billion price tag of the USS Gerald Ford, a recently completed aircraft carrier built from 100,000 metric tons of steel. Assuming the cost of durasteel is comparable to Earth steel, Feinstein calculates the costs of the two Death Star battlecrafts to be $193 quintillion and $419 quintillion.
A $419 quintillion space station may seem expensive, but its cost was actually relatively manageable compared to the Gross Galactic Product, the galaxy’s equivalent to the Gross Domestic Product, which Feinstein calculates to be $4.6 sextillion (that’s 21 zeros) based on the assumption that building the first Death Star is analogous to the Manhattan Project, America’s $2.2 billion, 20-year project to build its first nuclear weapon.
With debts that large, it’s impossible for the Rebel Alliance to bail out the galactic banks, according to the study.
“It may be that the Force is awakening 30 years after the events of Episode VI because of the economic forces at play,” Feinstein said.
It’s possible, but we’re willing to bet Feinstein’s calculations won’t make an appearance when Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters nationwide on December 18.
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at [email protected] or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
