pick a big number, any big number

[Lanya]

    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.”

http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html

[Michael Tee]

Their greed told them to pick whatever number represented the total remaining balance of funds, including all gold reserves, in the U.S. Treasury multiplied by a factor of 50, but their instincts for self-preservation told them to keep if under a trillion.  $999,999,999,999.98 was a little too obvious, so they settled on $700 billion - - for now.

[BT]

This isn't as outrgeous as it sounds.

When i seek appropriations i usually word the motion with an up to figure. No requirement to spend it all but it gives you wiggle room discretion if the situation arises and saves the need to go back for more.

[Xavier_Onassis]

$700 billion does not only sound outrageous, it is outrageous if it is our money.

Even more outrageous is that almost no one has benefited from the incompetence that caused this mess, and they are going to take it from us whether we like it or not.

[Michael Tee]

What's outrageous is that the money lost did not vanish.  It went into some very specific people's pockets.  These people were and are good friends with key legislators of both parties.  Apart from very token amounts, none of those funds will ever be recovered.  Unless you are a dedicated professional researcher with a few years to spend, you will never know the names of the people who got the money, how much they got and where it is now.  Even if our dedicated and professional researcher knows the answers with reasonable certainty, he or she will never be able to prove it in a court of law.  They probably won't even be able to find a publisher.  The money, for the most part, which hasn't been spent,  will remain in the pockets of the thieves who orchestrated the rip-offs in the first place.  The tax-payers will pay the bill like the suckers they are.  And spend the rest of their lives paying, and paying, and paying.  And still voting for the same people but with different faces.  Every year a new crop of faces, every year the same scams and rip-offs.  That's the system.

[Xavier_Onassis]

but...but...UP says capitalism is great, and we should never try to regulate any of it.

[Lanya]

Now we have China doing this:

China banks told to halt lending to US banks-SCMP
Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:52pm EDT
 

BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

"The decree appears to be Beijing's first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland's major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis," the SCMP said.

A spokesman for the CBRC had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Alan Wheatley and Langi Chiang; editing by Ken Wills)
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSPEK16693720080925

[BT]

What's outrageous is that the money lost did not vanish.  It went into some very specific people's pockets.  These people were and are good friends with key legislators of both parties.  Apart from very token amounts, none of those funds will ever be recovered.  Unless you are a dedicated professional researcher with a few years to spend, you will never know the names of the people who got the money, how much they got and where it is now.  Even if our dedicated and professional researcher knows the answers with reasonable certainty, he or she will never be able to prove it in a court of law.  They probably won't even be able to find a publisher.  The money, for the most part, which hasn't been spent,  will remain in the pockets of the thieves who orchestrated the rip-offs in the first place.  The tax-payers will pay the bill like the suckers they are.  And spend the rest of their lives paying, and paying, and paying.  And still voting for the same people but with different faces.  Every year a new crop of faces, every year the same scams and rip-offs.  That's the system.

Meanwhile Berkshire Investments (Warren Buffett) made almost a billion bucks on paper on their 5 billion dollar investment in Goldman Sachs.

In one day.