$700 Billion: Picked Out of Thin Air?

Charles Johnsonfollow me on twitter
Business • Mon Sep 29, 2008 at 7:49 am PDT • Views: 503

You won’t believe where that $700-billion bailout figure came from.

You know where that very important $700-billion figure came from?

Here’s a quote from that Forbes story:

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

They made it up to be sufficiently ginormous to frighten everyone into rapid action.

And it worked.

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 Frank says:

You can tell what they think of our music by the places we are forced to play it in. This looks like a good spot for a livestock show. -- April 1968, Chicago, Mothers of Invention open for Cream