How Big is Big?

The following is a graphic done by Barry Ritholtz to try to give a meaning to how big the bailouts have been...

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The thing that most people are quickly forgetting is that this huge financial disaster was the handiwork of the Bush administration and its intellectual cronies, in this case the economic ideologues who argued that "government is the problem, not the solution" and that "free" means no law, no regulation, no supervision.

These are the people who tried to convince everyone that if it wasn't measured by a buck it wasn't real and that social relations should be reduced to contracts and money exchange. Ideas like love, family, honesty, and community were scorned by these ideologues who believed everything was an economic relationship and that the only good economic relationship was unregulated. These people tried to convince everyone that when Bill Gates went shopping for something he got the same "deal" as the poverty-struck, unemployed inner city resident. These people argued that there are no economic villains except the government. These people sold a vicious fantasy that ruled the US for the last 30 years and blighted millions of lives.