Bailouts could cost taxpayers $23.7 trillion?

Posted Jul 20th 2009 3:40PM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Scandals

Bloomberg reports that "U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bail out financial companies, according to Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program."

$23.7 trillion? That's an amount so large that it's almost meaningless. To put it perspective, think of it this way: There are approximately 300 million people in the United States. My dollar store calculator couldn't handle an equation that big so I had to type it into Google but it works out to $79,000 per person.

Not per family or household. Per person. If you have a kindergartner, call him in and explain that he now owes $79,000.

The silver lining is that much of that expenditure -- if it really doesn't end up being that high -- will be recouped when the loans are repaid and the equity stakes are resold. But still: $23.7 trillion? How did the banks end up with balance sheet gaps of anything close to $79,000 per person? It doesn't make sense and it seems really, really high -- more than double the size of the entire national debt (although that's catching up too).

But the Goldman boys need more bonuses, so bailout we must.

Tags: Bailouts, inthenews, Stimulus, TARP

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

7-20-2009 @ 10:18PM

william lindblad said...

It will be more like the 7 trillion range - that is - IF. If being an unknown factor based upon no further major calamities.
And yes, we really do need to throw money at all of the morons that created this mess. They deserve it.