Matt Collins
01-16-2009, 08:31 PM
Bailout Figures Zoom Past "Insane," Take a Right Turn at "Monstrous"
"Brain-Boggling Bailout Boondoggle Numbers" was the headline story of our November 13, 2008 issue.
We reported that the federal government's bail-out figures had reached staggering proportions -- topping the two trillion dollar amount.
That figure is almost inconceivable.
So... how do we describe the more recent estimate by CNBC.com?
The respected news source calculated on November 28 that the bailout total had reached... $7.36 trillion dollars.
CNBC says that figure "is a combination of what's been committed (where it is defined) and what has actually been spent or lent (where a given program has started)."
To put that in some kind of perspective, that is more than twice what was spent on World War II, adjusted for inflation. And nine times what the government has spent so far on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Or... half the U.S. annual gross national product.
Or... enough to pay off half or more of the country's mortgages.
Or... roughly $24,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.
Or... roughly $50,000 per taxpayer.
"Not only is it an astronomical amount of money, it's 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..." notes CNBC.
CNBC has a chart showing all the gory details of where the money is supposed to go, at the URL below.
And of course, the bailout is, as some say about our Constitution, a "living document." It's still going on. Special interest groups are begging, or demanding, hundreds of billions more. (A similar story by Bloomberg News puts the government's promises at $7.7 trillion.)
So tune in next issue. These incomprehensibly large numbers above may be... incomprehensibly larger.
(Sources: CNBC.com
http://www.cnbc.com/id/27719011
Liberator Online, "Brain-Boggling Bailout Boondoggle Numbers"
http://www.theadvocates.org/liberator/vol-13-num-19.html )
"Brain-Boggling Bailout Boondoggle Numbers" was the headline story of our November 13, 2008 issue.
We reported that the federal government's bail-out figures had reached staggering proportions -- topping the two trillion dollar amount.
That figure is almost inconceivable.
So... how do we describe the more recent estimate by CNBC.com?
The respected news source calculated on November 28 that the bailout total had reached... $7.36 trillion dollars.
CNBC says that figure "is a combination of what's been committed (where it is defined) and what has actually been spent or lent (where a given program has started)."
To put that in some kind of perspective, that is more than twice what was spent on World War II, adjusted for inflation. And nine times what the government has spent so far on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Or... half the U.S. annual gross national product.
Or... enough to pay off half or more of the country's mortgages.
Or... roughly $24,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.
Or... roughly $50,000 per taxpayer.
"Not only is it an astronomical amount of money, it's 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..." notes CNBC.
CNBC has a chart showing all the gory details of where the money is supposed to go, at the URL below.
And of course, the bailout is, as some say about our Constitution, a "living document." It's still going on. Special interest groups are begging, or demanding, hundreds of billions more. (A similar story by Bloomberg News puts the government's promises at $7.7 trillion.)
So tune in next issue. These incomprehensibly large numbers above may be... incomprehensibly larger.
(Sources: CNBC.com
http://www.cnbc.com/id/27719011
Liberator Online, "Brain-Boggling Bailout Boondoggle Numbers"
http://www.theadvocates.org/liberator/vol-13-num-19.html )