January/February 2010 Issue

The Real Size of the Bailout

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The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the tip of the iceberg of money paid out or set aside by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. In her book, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street, Nomi Prins uncovers the hush-hush programs and crunches the hidden numbers to calculate the shocking actual size of the bailout: $14.4 trillion and counting.

(Figures current as of October 31, 2009. Click here for an explanation of the abbreviations and programs below.)

Treasury Department and Federal Reserve

This chart is part of Mother Jones’ coverage of the financial crisis, one year later.

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Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now, so we need a huge surge in donations to come in during this final week.

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