All Posts Tagged With: "taxpayer burden"

That’s not how much you get. That’s your share of the debt that the government’s racking up for this bailout alone. Bloomberg.com puts the bailout into perspective…

The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

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The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Vineland, New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors Inc. and an economist for the Atlanta Fed for 10 years until January. “The backlash has begun already. Congress is taking a lot of hits from their constituents because they got snookered on the TARP big time. There’s a lot of supposedly smart people who look to be totally incompetent and it’s all going to fall on the taxpayer.”

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(H/T: Sullivan)

You read that right: $3.8 trillion. That’s how much money our federal government has already thrown at the financial crisis, according to a CNBC report, which is “more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation.”

If you are dumbfounded by the amount of money the federal government is pouring into the private sector to ease the nation’s financial crisis, it’s worth a look at how much Uncle Sam has spent on other major projects and historic events in the past, such as wars, bailouts and engineering marvels.

Thus far, only one item surpasses the $700 billion allocated to the government’s main rescue fund, what’s known as the Treasury Dept.’s TARP program. Other expenses and/or commitments, from Federal Reserve lending and guarantees to FDIC insurance fund losses to complex financial market mechanism, put the total cost at some $3.8 trillion (as of Oct. 23).

CNBC has put together a slide show of milestones in government spending.