[lbo-talk] Bailout Total: $29.616 Trillion Dollars

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Mon Dec 12 08:27:53 PST 2011


Marv Gandall

There were so many facilities, and so many ways of counting, that I may have this all balled up. But so far as I can recall, Bernanke's 1.2 trillion was the peak credit outstanding on a single day. Fed critics like Sanders counted each revolving loan, even overnight ones, as a new loan. So if a bank rolled over a $1 million dollar loan every day for a week, it brought the cumulative loan total to $7 million. Hence, Bernie's $16 trillion. I think Bloomberg recently went with Bernanke's $1.2 trillion but also added the benefits accruing from the TARP to US and foreign banks - mainly the profits resulting from the spread on their below market borrowing costs and their investments in Treasury bonds and other securities, for a total $7 trillion. Don't know where the $30 trillion comes from, perhaps a cumulative total of the revolving loans and the net interest of the banks. There must be some research out there showing the methods which were used by the different parties.

^^^^^

CB: Thanks , Marv. Evidently, it was the Government Accounting Office that counted up to $16 trillion. It includes foreign banks. We should go with the GAO method of counting , I would think. (smiles).



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