Even if, by some miracle which nobody can possibly foresee, the cost of the bailout turns out to be only 1.3 trillion dollars, the point would still stand: That money - averaged over the time until the next crash - would handsomely pay for running an entire public clearing system. With these kinds of numbers, an order of magnitude or two in either direction will not tip the balance.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Because the Fed doesn't know how much it has been lending, what's the betting the real numbers are far more generous?
13 trillion is nearly the entire US GDP. You really have to let that sink in for a while - the Fed has handed out a sum equivalent to the entire US GDP to Wall St investment banks, without proper accounting or oversight.
But no - state-run banking would still be more expensive and less efficient and productive.
Right.
