Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Exactly how much have we spent on bailouts so far? Over $2 trillion so far (from the article):

• $29 billion for Bear Stearns
• $143.8 billion for AIG
• $100 billion for Fannie Mae
• $100 billion for Freddie Mac
• $700 billion for Wall Street, including Bank of America (Merrill Lynch), Citigroup, JP Morgan (WaMu), Wells Fargo (Wachovia), Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and a lot more
• $25 billion for The Big Three in Detroit
• $8 billion for IndyMac
• $150 billion stimulus package (from January)
• $50 billion for money market funds
• $138 billion for Lehman Bros. (post bankruptcy) through JP Morgan
• $620 billion for general currency swaps from the Fed

$2,000,000,000,000 is not a number I can wrap my head around. That’s about $7,000 for every American. Or even more stunning it’s about $15,000 per taxpayer.

And it’s not the full story:

[It] doesn’t include the hundreds of billions the fed has and will buy up in commercial paper and lend out to other financial firms. The deficit is nearly $440 billion this year, and the national debt is $10.5 trillion.

And with Washington planning more handouts to the Big 3 and more “stimulus packages” in the works, it will only get worse.

I really don’t understand the logic of the stimulus package. Basically, the government borrows money and gives it to us who spend it on junk and get to repay it later. Isn’t borrowing money to buy junk what got us in problem in the first place?

You don’t give an alcoholic even more alcohol, you don’t given a drug addict even more drugs. Why does Washington think more debt is the solution to too much debt?