Saturday 20 September 2008

The US housing bail-out - the tab so far

Here is the bill as of today:

$700 billion - Additional borrowing to set of a new bank resolution agency that will buy distressed mortgage debt.
$200 billion - Estimated cost of sorting out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
$85 billion - Emergency credit line to AIG
$29 billion - Credit guarantees to JP Morgan as part of the Bear Stearns collapse
$10 billion - Approximate cost of deposit insurance payments by the FDIC.

Somebody please check my math, but I reckon we are already at $1,024 billion. It reminds me of that old line "a billion here; a billion there; it soon adds up to real money".

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's only 1,024 billion... ;)

Alice Cook said...

Now corrected, I knew my arithmetic would le tme down.

Alice

Anonymous said...

Arithmetic was fine - just inattention to units... ;)

Shall we hold a sweepstake on how long it'll be before they have to up the national debt limit?

Because the first amount is woefully inadequate for a bank resolution agency. The $200B is for Fred 'n' Fan is just someone having a laugh. AIG will swallow much more than $85B and the FDIC amount is just sheer lunacy.

And the banks will die anyway, because people will withdraw their money to put into the federal insured money market funds where they'll get more interest for zero risk...

Anonymous said...

Over a trillion - Does Joe Public realise how much a trillion is, I wonder? Someone recently calculated: If you spend a dollor every second, it will take you nearly 317 centuries to spend a trillion. Ooooh...

Anonymous said...

Golly I can remember when the phrase was "a million here a million there..."

I really need to get with the times.

Anonymous said...

You'd better hurry - soon the phrase will be "a trillion here a trillion there..."

Anonymous said...

Some more takes on how much it is really going to cost:

here and here