JasonC

Bailout Cost, per Taxpayer, by Income

No, we will grow 6-7% per year long term average after all the noise.

The market dropped 777 points on Monday. But the same index was *worth* 777 points at the 1982 low, 26 years ago. In 26 years, a day's hard fluctuation is the size the whole market was then.

The permabears will be screaming "doom, doom" when the market drops 10,000 points in one day, 26 years from now. All the way down to 175,000.

Perhaps it won't be quite that good, and perhaps it will meander around for 5 years before taking off again. Or perhaps it will take off within 6 months after a bailout bill passes. Nobody knows, and I for one don't much care. As long as we don't deliberately nuke the golden goose that is our financial system, a generation from now every doom mongering short today, will look as dumb as the doom mongering shorts of 1982. Who all said that recession was Hoover all over again and Reagan was a dunce, etc, etc.

Bailout Cost, per Taxpayer, by Income

The UST collects 20% of national income regardless of policies, tax, spending, funding, investment, any of it. That is the econometric reality.

Therefore, the only question and I mean the only question on the cost of this policy is whether it will raise or lower future GDP. If it will raise it, it will pay for itself many times over. If not, it will cost something.

But a very modest something. Our actual collective wealth is not the money lying around, or the inventories, or even all assets at their current prices, let alone the prices they would fetch in a general deflationary smash. Instead, it is our entire future income stream, also known as the economy. Which is $14.3 trillion a year and rising 6-7% a year forever.

Nobody debating the subject is remotely sane or thinking like an economist, and it show. One entry accounting and tendentious spin is all you see.