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The Federal Reserve extended over $1 trillion to the globe's largest financial firms during 2008's financial crisis, according to new analysis from Bloomberg News. The $1.2 trillion that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pumped into companies to keep financial markets functioning is roughly equivalent to the amount American homeowners owe on delinquent or foreclosed mortgages, according to Bloomberg. The new analysis is based on data released by the Fed following Freedom of Information requests and a lawsuit filed by Bloomberg, The central bank had been reluctant to release the data, arguing that making its lending public would damage the reputation...

Link only, per FR posting rules

Rep. Ron Paul on Monday introduced legislation that would lower the federal government's debt by canceling the roughly $1.6 trillion in debt held by the Federal Reserve. Paul has argued for the last few weeks that the idea represents a quick way to make the growing fiscal crisis more manageable. Under his bill, H.R. 2768, the $1.6 trillion that the Treasury owes to the Federal Reserve would disappear. The Federal Reserve began buying Treasury bonds in earnest late last year as part of its effort to keep long-term interest rates down. But Paul has argued that Fed purchases of Treasury...

Thought this might be interesting and helpful: http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

“Why, one wonders, not ‘save’ $5 trillion by proposing to spend that amount to cover the moon with yogurt and then cancelling the proposal?” -George Will, Washington Post, March 12, 2009 Claim 1: “Winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will save $1 trillion.” Reality: The Reid plan relies on the inaccurate assumption that surge-level spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is scheduled to continue over the next decade. An honest budget cannot claim to save taxpayers’ dollars by cutting spending that was not requested and will not be spent. Senate Democrats are employing a budget gimmick that will not...

All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"... A billion dollars... A hundred billion dollars... Eight hundred billion dollars... One TRILLION dollars... What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like. We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go. A packet...

FoxNews headline ticker

One of the depressing features of the Republican Party is the way they get suckered time and again into playing on Democrats’ terms. The pathetic spectacle of grown men and women sitting around in meetings trying to agree “grand bargains” to save $43.7 bazillion in federal spending by 2023 before an allegedly looming deadline of August 2nd is almost too perfect a snapshot of Washington stupidity. The rest of the world isn’t looking for a grand bargain by August 2nd. And it knows enough about the decadent state of US law-making to know that any such bargain would be voted...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting House Republicans will vote next week to cut $2.4 trillion over the next ten years while increasing the debt ceiling by a $2.4 trillion. House Republicans said Friday that they planned to vote next week on a proposal to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion, with matching cuts and guidelines to control future government spending. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said at a news conference Friday that the House next week would vote on a "cut, cap and balance" approach. The House plans to separately vote on a measure that would...

Dems fault Obama for not using bully pulpitBy Alexander Bolton - 06/29/11 05:45 AM ET Senate Democrats are accusing President Obama of failing to use his bully pulpit effectively in the debt-ceiling fight. They say most people are confused about the issue and don’t understand they’d face an economic catastrophe if the $14.3 trillion ceiling isn’t raised by Aug. 2. While Democratic lawmakers share some of the blame, they say Obama has not used his media power aggressively enough to educate voters about the complex issue, and that this has given leverage to Republicans in negotiations on a deficit-reduction package...

Remember that 2012 budget alternative Senate Democrats have been so fidgety about releasing to the public? We now know why they aren't especially eager to share their grand blueprint with taxpayers: Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) on Tuesday presented a budget proposal to Senate Democrats that calls for an even balance — 50 percent to 50 percent — of spending cuts and tax increases to reduce the deficit. The emerging consensus on Capitol Hill is there should be at least $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. To meet that goal, Congress would have to increase tax

A 100-trillion-dollar bill, it turns out, is worth about $5. That's the going rate for Zimbabwe's highest denomination note, the biggest ever produced for legal tender—and a national symbol of monetary policy run amok. At one point in 2009, a hundred-trillion-dollar bill couldn't buy a bus ticket in the capital of Harare. But since then the value of the Zimbabwe dollar has soared. Not in Zimbabwe, where the currency has been abandoned, but on eBay. The notes are a hot commodity among currency collectors and novelty buyers, fetching 15 times what they were officially worth in circulation. In the past...

The world's banks face a $3.6 trillion "wall of maturing debt" in the next two years and must compete with debt-laden governments to secure financing, the IMF warned on Wednesday. Many European banks need bigger capital cushions to restore market confidence and assure they can borrow, and some weak players will need to be closed, the International Monetary Fund said in its Global Financial Stability Report.

I have had a difficult time wrapping the concept of one trillion around my head. Comparisons to stuff in warehouses and football fields and all just didn't do it for me. But last night, Chuck Missler finally stated a comparison I can fathom. He put it in terms of seconds. One million seconds is four days. One billion seconds is 32 years. One trillion seconds is 32,000 years. Think how much money Obama and his Democrats have heaped on us, in these terms.

A Budget that Meets Two GoalsPosted by Jared Bernstein February 16, 2011 at 03:16 PM EST On Monday, the Administration released the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2012. It’s a Budget that meets two goals: it makes tough but necessary cuts that put our nation on a sustainable fiscal path. And it’s a budget that invests wisely to ensure economic opportunity for working Americans. As the President said Monday, this is a budget designed to help America win the future by out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building our global competition. But in order to afford those investments, the government needs to start...

(CNSNews.com) - The Department of Health and Human Services will become the nation's first-ever $1-trillion-per-year Cabinet department in 2014, which is also the first year President Barack Obama's health-care law is scheduled to be fully implemented by that department, according to the budget projections President Obama released yesterday. n fact, HHS already is costing American taxpayers more per year in inflation-adjusted dollars than the entire federal government cost back in 1965, the year President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed Medicare into law. Medicare is the single most costly program in HHS.

A Stack of 1 Trillion Pennies: 5 Ways to Visualize Our $13 Trillion National DebtBy Meredith Margrave Wednesday, June 30, 2010 $13 trillion. That's roughly the current size of the U.S. national debt. And it continues to grow every second. **SNIP** 4) The 50 Richest People in the Room Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, the entire Walton family -- these are just a few of the names that top Forbes' annual report on the richest people in the world. Yet none of them will ever be worth a trillion dollars. In fact, if you put the 50 richest billionaires in a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. budget deficit this year will jump nearly 40 percent over prior forecasts, mostly due to the mammoth tax-cut package brokered by President Barack Obama and lawmakers last month, the Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday. The CBO said the fiscal 2011 deficit will hit $1.48 trillion, up from last August's $1.07 trillion estimate, which was crafted before Bush-era tax rates were extended at a cost of $858 billion over 10 years. The CBO "estimates that the act (renewing tax cuts) will increase the deficit by $390 billion in 2011, by $407 billion in 2012 and...

Congressional Fiscal Hawks Eye $2.5 Trillion in Spending Cutsby Trish Turner | January 20, 2011 You read that number right - $2.5 trillion. **SNIP** Additional Program Eliminations/Spending Reforms: - Corporation for Public Broadcasting Subsidy. $445 million annual savings. - Save America's Treasures Program. $25 million annual savings. - International Fund for Ireland. $17 million annual savings. - Legal Services Corporation. $420 million annual savings. - National Endowment for the Arts. $167.5 million annual savings. - National Endowment for the Humanities. $167.5 million annual savings. - Hope VI Program. $250 million annual savings. - Amtrak Subsidies. $1.565 billion annual savings. -...