3 ms·
Yes it does. "If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. " These are not costs, they are guarantees. A cost is 100% s
by krschultz 18y ago
Yes it does.
"If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. "
These are not costs, they are guarantees. A cost is 100% sunk, no one knows exactly what percentage of these guarantees will ultimately be costs. But if it nears 50%, the bigger problem will be the number of homeless people in this country not the amount of money spent trying to prevent this from happening. And considering now a lot of mortgage companies are renegotiating and trying to prevent foreclosure, it is unlikely a lot of this money will end up being spent.
He makes no acknowledgement of that and therefore it is mis characterizing the expenses.
- jcl 18y agoHmm... It seems a big fuss over the semantics of a single word, then, especially as you seem to be using it in a non-standard way. No one says, for example, "I bought a car yesterday, but I won't know how much it cost until I eventually sell it." The bailout has an up-front cost -- an opportunity cost if nothing else. That's $4.6 trillion that suddenly cannot be used for something else, right now, regardless of the value of the assets we are purchasing.