Wait, Why Is It $700 Billion Exactly?

1. DoctorFedora
   September 28th, 2008 at 3:34 am

   Er, eight is only a lucky number in China. In Europe-based cultures, it's seven that you're thinking of.

2. Evil Pundit
   September 28th, 2008 at 3:53 am

   They should use that newly discovered Mersenne prime. That would be cool.

3. MoonCake
   September 28th, 2008 at 5:07 am

   i could be wrong on this one, but i read that they chose $700 billion because that's the max amount allowed to be spent without being questioned by the federal reserve.. or something like that...

   even if 95% of us are questioning it....

4. Sue Dunham
   September 28th, 2008 at 7:01 am

   You put the little finger to the side of your mouth and say the number in a portentous voice

5. TimO
   September 28th, 2008 at 9:06 am

   ...because the number $666 Billion scared the hell out of 'em even more....

   

6. gtron
   September 28th, 2008 at 9:22 am

   apparently if they chose 800 it was "too close to a Trillion" and wouldn't fly
   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

7. Christophe
   September 28th, 2008 at 9:28 am

   TimO : d*mn! you got it before me

8. Thomas
   September 28th, 2008 at 10:45 am

   I believe the number is actually about a trillion if you count the other smaller bailouts. $85 billion for AIG, and $200 billion for fannie/freddie. That puts us just at $985 billion (that we're undoubtedly borrowing ourselves).

   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.

9. zephyrum
   September 28th, 2008 at 11:09 am

   Funny thing is, that's about $250,000 per voting American. Why don't they just split the money up among us? ^__^

10. Johnny Cat
    September 28th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    I've done the math, and it's more like $425 per voting American.

11. Moon
    September 28th, 2008 at 6:07 pm

    Mooncake (love your handle BTW), Hahahaha! That can't be right! If it is, it's hilarious. Like declaring 15 exemptions on your income tax, because if you declare 16, they look at it.

12. xirvyg
    September 28th, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    Johnny Cat: I don't understand, you think there are over 1.6 billion voting Americans?

13. CheeseDuck
    September 28th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    $700,000,000,000 / 305,275,000 People in America = $2,293.01 per American

    Certainly NOT $425 per VOTING American.

14. Jerse
    September 28th, 2008 at 9:33 pm

    @Cheeseduck

    You are forgetting minors and foreigners

15. Johnny Cat
    September 28th, 2008 at 9:36 pm

    Uh yeah, sorry. That was from someone claiming the same thing on the AIG bailout. I estimate 200 million voters divided into 7 billion to be about 3500 before tax, if they tax. Sorry again, long day!

16. Johnny Cat
    September 29th, 2008 at 12:04 am

    To clarify, there's a claim making the email rounds that if the AIG bailout was divided among the estimated 200 million taxpayers, it would be 425,000...when in fact that math was way wrong, and included 3 too many zeroes.

    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.

17. sw
    September 29th, 2008 at 10:21 am

    Johnny Cat, I love your idea! I could pay off 1.5 credit cards, a win-win for me AND the creditors.

18. Noelegy
    September 29th, 2008 at 8:11 pm

    Well yeah, it's always easy to be generous with other people's money. I heard today that the value of the bad mortgages was around $100 billion. So where was the rest of the money going to go?

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