How's they come up with the $700 billion figure....

The $700-billion figure that dominated the first part of the first presidential debate of the 2008 general election season between McCain and Obama?
The $700-billion figure that won't really end up being anywhere near the actual cost because no one knows what all those mortgaged properties are really worth now anyway? Which is the whole problem in the first place because the institutions holding that paper don't know the value of what they're holding either, which is why everyone suddenly got so frightened?
That $700-billion figure that won't really last because eventually the feds will sell off what they're buying and might even make a profit in the end as they did with the Chrysler bailout warrants years ago?
You know where that very important $700-billion figure came from?
Here's a quote from that Forbes story:
"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."
They made it up to be sufficiently ginormous to frighten everyone into rapid action.
And it worked.....


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/bailout-plan.html

 

Economic terrorism in other words. I thought we didn't give in to terrorist demands?

 

Sounds like it.

How about making the spread sheet available ? The American people have shown themselves to be quite adept at finding these things out.

 

Yep at the speed of broadband. They don't want us to know the real numbers Bro. Maybe they're afraid if we saw them there would be a revolution. But, I got my doubts about that too. We've pretty much shown we'll fall for anything Govcorp Inc. tells us.

 

They came up with the figure by giving laptops to 12 gay monkeys...no, wait, that was the Democratic platform.​

 

And the difference is?????:thumbs:

AJ

 

I heard someone say when it first happened that they chose a number between $500 Mil and $1 Tril. The $1 Tril would be the cost when you add the other bailouts (AIG etc...)

 

Well, I heard they just winked and wrote a number on the back of an envelope as they manipulated the market to blackmail congress and stick it the people. And I heard it from Mike Whitney who heard it from Bloomberg News who heard it from Marc Faber.

Paulson’s $700 billion boondoggle

How did Treasury Secretary Paulson figure out that recapitalizing the banking system would cost $700 billion? Or did he just estimate the amount of money that could be loaded on the back of the Treasury’s flatbed truck when it sputters off to shower his buddies at G-Sax with freshly minted greenbacks? The point is that Paulson’s calculations were not assisted by any economists at all, and they cannot be trusted. It is a purely arbitrary, “back of the envelope” type figuring.

According to Bloomberg: Swiss investor Marc Faber, known for a long track record of good calls, believes the damage may come to $5 trillion: “Marc Faber, managing director of Marc Faber Ltd. in Hong Kong, said the U.S. government’s rescue package for the financial system may require as much as $5 trillion, seven times the amount Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has requested . . .

“’The $700 billion is really nothing,’ Faber said in a television interview. ‘The treasury is just giving out this figure when the end figure may be $5 trillion.’” (Bloomberg News)