Bad Credit Blues

Are you having trouble wrapping your brain around the concept of 700 billion bucks? Me too. Just how much money is that, anyway? I mean, the obvious answer is that is is $700,000,000.00, but that is such a big number it is really hard to grasp. It is certainly a lot more than I have in my savings account!

Well, you have heard of NASA, right? In 2009 they plan to launch a lot of people into outer space, and to keep space stations running. They have a planned budget of less than 18 billion dollars. That number looks a lot smaller than 700 billion dollars. So the bailout plan money could keep NASA going for about 4 decades at the current space program budget.

Planned budgets for the US military, and for social security each top 600 billion. So those numbers look closer to 700 billion. So the bailout would keep the US military or social security program running for 1 year.

It is interesting to look at the amounts of money we allocate to various federal programs, and to compare them with the bailout money. Let’s just hope somebody figures out the right thing to do, and then does it fast.

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