Wednesday, November 19, 2008

$700 billion? What the Frak?

If you are like me, you have been hearing a lot of numbers thrown around with all the bailouts of banks and what not. Trying to keep a running total in my head, I started thinking, hmmm...that sounds like more than $700 billion to me.

Turns out my powers of estimation served me well, but not well enough. CNBC has been keeping track. They came up with a number of almost $4.3 trillion for all the bailouts! That's off by about a factor of 6! This really is a government operation complete with huge cost overruns.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have 2 sections in my wallet. One is were I keep the greenbacks, the other is were I keep the Monopoly money....... just in case people quit accepting the greenbacks.

OrbsCorbs said...

"Not only is it a astronomical amount of money, its' a complicated cocktail of budgeted dollars, actual spending, guarantees, loans, swaps and other market mechanisms by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and other offices of government taken over roughly the last year, based on government data and news releases."

And we haven't even started on the Big 3 yet.

This may go down as the biggest financial boondoggle in the history of human civilization. It is too large and complicated to comprehend, just like our government, and I'm sure all sorts of leeches and pigs are getting fatter because of it, just like our government. Only one thing is certain: the common people will suffer so that the rich can get richer.

happy hippy chick said...

I think the IRS should audit all of the members of government, check the over-seas accounts. Something definitly sounds fishy to me. I for one am sick of the billionaires asking for handouts. They complain because no one is spending any money, they show up in their private jets, stay in the fancy dancy hotel suites and then complain because they dont know how to make more money than GOD! Heck, I'd like a handout too, after all I like you am one of the ones that has to pay this back!!!!!!