It's Raining Money

What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's too many numerals to fit on your pocket calculator. But, given the accelerating obesity crisis in the United States, it's clear that many American pants could use far larger pockets. So the Obama administration will be offering tax credits to families who participate in the large-pocket impact study commissioned by the Pocket-Size Regulatory Authority. That should stimulate the economy sufficiently to stimulate someone into inventing the four-foot-wide pocket calculator that shows enough zeroes to calculate the size of the bailout

Barry Ritholz, author of the forthcoming book Bailout Nation, calculated--gosh, was it only six weeks ago?--that the tab for the bailout by November 24 was already $4.6165 trillion, which looks much more convincing because it's big but not round. It's specific to four decimal points, which sounds like they've got way down in the weeds of taxi receipts and lunch money. The media coo over Obama's "new New Deal," but, as Mr. Ritholz pointed out, if you adjust for inflation, the combined costs of the old New Deal plus the Louisiana Purchase, the Marshall Plan, the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars, and every NASA project in history--oh, and the S&L crisis--add up to a mere $3.92 trillion. Even as he was totting up his numbers, the Bloomberg news service estimated that, factoring in Citibank and a couple of other Johnny-come-latelys, the bailout bill was in fact up to $7.76 trillion--which is the combined cost of all that other stuff (Louisiana Purchase, etc.) plus the $3.6 trillion of the Second World War

Yeah, that's the stuff. Burns at first and then makes me smile. Kinda like bourbon.