C'mon, you've been paying attention, right? The size of the US mortgage market is how big? Ok, I'll tell you: it's at least $10T. What's the size of unsecured consumer credit in the US? At least $3T?
So you think the bailout should be an order of magnitude or more larger than the one being proposed?
It's funny because it's the exact opposite of fractional banking.
Which is the same reason why it's not a good idea.
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Carrol writes:
> ... the "stimulus" planned is spitting in the ocean, and
> any _actually_ serious plan would have to be wildly unreasonable
> by ordinary standards.
I think there's a lot of support for the notion that the current stimulus bill isn't enough. It doesn't have to be $13T (see above), but it's widely claimed that "too much" is a much better mistake than "too little" since you can always roll-back any cuts you've made.
It's like a carpenter friend once told me: never be afraid to cut a piece of wood too short, because you can always add some back ...
FWIW, I think James Galbraith has some good ideas:
/jordan