- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Joe Conason
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
We are told that the bankster bailout will cost hundreds of Billions of dollars, and now we have information that the true bill will be 23 Trillion or so.
No - $23 trillion is not the actual cost. It's just the amount theoretically at risk: if every single mortgage defaulted and the homes have no value, if every single bank fails and has no assets, and even that T-bills turn out to have a value of zero.
As Barofsky made clear, it's not intended to be a prediction of the actual costs of these programs - not even close. It's an absolute worst case scenario, and it's intended to provide an accurate picture of the true size of the commitment the government has made with taxpayer funds.
