Congress is burning the midnight oil negotiating over the bailout package, and I bet you dollar to donuts it'll happen soon. But have you ever wonder how they arrived at the magic number of $700 billion figure for the bailout? The answer may surprise you:
In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."
Whaaaa? Not based on any particular data point? Then why not make it $888 billion - it's catchier and plus 8 is a lucky number.
even if 95% of us are questioning it....
;-)
it's a comedy show, and you are both the audience AND the sucker...
lay your money down!
(oh, and hurry up and give it to us! Oh, and, no, we don't want any oversight - in eight months when the whole thing tanks, we'll have funneled the money out to the rich guys again, and the country goes under
One thing that stuck out at the debate was that earmarks make up a total of $18 billion per year, so if we arbitrarily add that number, we can just barely top the big $1,000,000,000,000. Hooray, US! They say our education system sucks, but we can count reeeeeeeeaaaallly high.
Certainly NOT $425 per VOTING American.
You are forgetting minors and foreigners
Also, while the 3500 bucks may not be as desirable, if each citizen got that as a check in the mail, I would think they would pour it back into their credit balances, make mortgage payments, and buy products. The money still funnels to the rich bankers, without the temptation for them to just pocket it, and leave us debtors in the dark. The Paulson plan is to simply hand them the cash.