>>> Why would the GAO publish at all such a misleading
>>> number as $16 trillion ...
>>
>> Well, they didn't. Did you read the report?
>
> The GAO did, in fact, publish the sensational 16 trillion
> dollar number in July.
They do, as you say, have a table that has a bunch of numbers which, if you add them up, gives you $16T. They don't, as far as I can tell from reading the report, say what Bernie Sanders says. Or what now c b repeats.
> as I suggested yesterday, this is an AGGREGATE total in which
> the same million dollar overnight loan rolled over for a week
> would count as separate loans totalling seven million dollars.
Yes, I quite agree. And I bet GAO would agree also.
> As the GAO note accompanying the table explains: "The total dollar
> amounts borrowed represent the sum of all loans and have not
> been adjusted to reflect differences in terms to maturity for the
> loans."
I feel like I'm repeating myself: GAO is clear in what the numbers mean. They did not say that $16T was the cost of the bailout. Bernie Sanders did, and cb repeats it.
c b's question "Why would GAO publish an unreliable number" is answered affirmatively above: they did not do what c b claims they did.
/jordan