Do you find yourself feeling bloated or sluggish at the very thought of digesting yet another dollar bailout figure?
Does the mention of a few trillion dollars not even cause you to raise your eyebrows anymore?
You may not know it, but you might be one of the countless sufferers of trillion fatigue. Our surveys (sample size five) show up to 88 per cent of people have experienced dollar-number related discomforts from time to time, requiring ever larger sums to catch their attention.
Want to beat that disquieting feeling?
Try Bloomberg’s latest story on the total amount the US Government and Federal Reserve has now spent lending or guaranteeing the US financial system:
March 31 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s. New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks.
The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the chief executives of the nation’s 12 biggest banks on March 27 at the White House to enlist their support to thaw a 20-month freeze in bank lending.