I’ve been trying to put the $700 billion Wall Street bailout number in some kind of context. From the wikipedia:
The Dot-com bubble crash wiped out $5 trillion in market value of technology companies from March 2000 to October 2002
Sure glad we got that .com government bailout back in 2001 🙂
I had put together a site a couple of years ago to explain, in laymen's terms, what the Iraq was costing us. Some examples:
What else could we do with $323 billion?
Hire 577,648 teachers for 12 years
Based on average teacher salary of $46,597.
Give every student enrolled in a four year college a $33,423 scholarship
Based on 9,664,000 students enrolled in a four year college.
Buy health insurance for all 45 million uninsured Americans for almost two years
Based on average insurance cost of $3,695.00 per person. If, unlike with the Medicare prescription drug bill, we were able to leverage our market power, the cost would be much less.
Buy 20 brand new stadiums for all 30 teams in Major League Baseball – 600 stadiums total
Based on $522 million estimated cost of the new stadium for the Minnesota Twins.
Build 1,448 bridges to nowhere
Based on $223 million estimated cost of a bridge connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, (population 7,685) to an island with 50 people.
You have to more than double all those numbers for this bailout.
It may be time to go back and update that.
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