A zillion dollars?

It's all over the blogosphere today that the estimated value of the "bailout" is about $7.5 trillion. Sounds gigantic doesn't it? Well, yeah it is. But it's not that simple, this is a bit of double speak. I think it's meant to shock. It's a fuzzy number, and I've yet to see a real explanation of how you arrive at it. I think people hear this and think that's how much has been doled out to banks and insurance companies.

I'm just not sure where the number came from. As near as I can figure, that value actually represents a worst case scenario. It includes all the assets that the government has agreed to guarantee, and all the loans they could possibly give. So those don't cost anything unless things go south in a lot of ways. Could it happen? Yeah. Will it? No clue. As evidenced by my previous post, I'm not too happy with this whole situation. But lets not bandy about these hypothetical numbers like they're real.

I totally get that this is ridiculous and shouldn't have to be done. But that doesn't change the fact that we're in dire straights. We can't be too worried about defect spending right now. That's what got us into the Great Depression. Hoover didn't respond to the stock market crisis, instead he tried to balance the budget. We know how that ended. That being said, I certainly wouldn't be pleased if the real cost of this thing ended up at that $7.5 trillion mark. Lets just agree not to foam at the mouth quite yet.