Storm of Apples and Oranges

We’ve heard a number of reports over recent days putting the total government bailout costs at several trillions of dollars. But there are a lot of apples and oranges being thrown around. There are directly appropriated US government spending on the TARP. Then there’s Fed lending, which is different. Then there are various loan guarantees and agreements to backstop questionable assets. These are all very different kinds of expenditures and some of them don’t even really count as ‘spending’ in the ordinary sense we understand the term. To start disentangling the mess, we’ve put together an initial run down of the many different kinds of spending, loans and loan-guarantees and what the amounts are with each.