Bigger than the Marshall Plan, Moon Landing, LA Purchase, S&L bailout, Korean War, and NASA budget combined

The federal government's financial bailouts bill could easily top $4.6 trillion.

How much money is that, anyway? Brace yourself. That number, Mr. Lanchester writes, paraphrasing one expert, is bigger than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the Apollo moon landings, the 1980s savings and loan crisis, the Korean War and the total cost of NASA s space flights, all added together repeat, added together (and yes, the old figures are adjusted upward for inflation).

That excerpt appears in the NYTimes review of "I.O.U.: How Everyone Owes Everyone But No One Can Pay" by John Lanchester, a novelist rather than an economist.

For once I'm in agreement with Bush who remarked

: "This sucker could go down."

With the U.S. legislative branch in total catalepsy (as threat of filibuster now requires supermajority for passage of any legislation) no federal regulation will successfully address the current, much less reign in the next, hyper-bubble.

Schwarzenegger is proposing to end Calworks completely (if the Fed doesn’t cough up $7B) That would trigger thousands of homeless families who would become dependent on county services… the funds for which do not exist.

All this because Reagan taught us taxes are evil, even when disparity of wealth rockets out of sight? Apparently the wealthy need to actually see the streets littered with working class families before they’ll consent to new taxes. Will we also need Hugo, Dickens, and Steinbeck to rise from the dustbin and explain famine to us in storybook form?

I keep wanting to doubt that the world's vanguard of representative government has become a morally decrepit society of hoarders and war mongers.

What will it take: earthquake? Depression era failures of social services? Right/Libertarian propaganda about "self reliance" must be exposed as empty idealism. Crippling of the legislative branch through filibuster has defeated representative government. As American democracy subsides to oligarchy, class riots become an ever increasing possibility. How will the markets “factor” that in?