$7.4 trillion

Jesus Fucking Christ. That's how much cash the U.S. Treasury has proffered in loan guarantees to the finance industry. That's about six months worth of GNP. Probably some of the debt will turn out good, but in the absence of any plan to help the people who owe money to the banks, the prospects look dim.

It's tempting to focus on the injustice. The owning class made this mess and now their plan seems to be to insulate themselves from the consequences by taking advantage of the fact that free market ideologues will control the White House for another two months. This situation is, as Jason said in comments, disgusting.

But, as with many of the policies of the Bush Administration, focusing on the injustice threatens to distract attention from the catastrophic stupidity. We're all in deep water here, but the financiers think that they can stay afloat by standing on the rest of our shoulders. What they don't see is that when the rest of us drown, they'll be stuck treading water with no shoreline in sight.

This far into the Bush Administration I had thought that my capacity for outrage had been exhausted. Guess not.

Just to throw in something constructive: Josh Marshall has the right idea about how we ought to be setting our priorities:

The bottom line, I think, is that the money has to go toward building real stuff -- primarily infrastructure -- and pumped into the hands of people who will immediately spend it, i.e., middle and lower-income people who will spend it on necessities. |TPM|

Also: By my calculations, the guv'mint has promised 300 times as much to the financial industry as the auto industry was asking for.