The Real Cost of T.A.R.P to American Taxpapers

The Real Size of the Bailout (featured from an article in "Mother Jones " magazine)
— By Nomi Prins

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.




12 Better Uses for the Bailout Bucks


Vaccinate kids, fix poverty, buy the world an iPhone. And that's just a start.

— By Marian Wang

What else could $14 trillion buy?
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10 years of vaccines for kids in 117 countries
$110 billion

10 years of $10,000 bonuses for all US public school teachers
$318 billion

Sending all 2009 US high school grads to private college
$347 billion

Doubling US spending on HIV/AIDS and cancer research for 20 years
$493 billion

10 years of CO2 offsets for all Americans
$559 billion

Meeting UN anti-poverty goals by 2015
$757 billion

20 years of universal preschool in US
$860 billion

Buying a house for every homeless American
$878 billion

10 years of helping developing countries deal with the effects of climate change
$2 trillion

Buying the world an iPhone 3GS
$2 trillion

10 years of private health insurance for uninsured Americans
$2.2 trillion

Paying off 1/3 of US home mortgages
$3.5 trillion
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Total: $14 trillion

This chart is part of Mother Jones' (Too big to Jail) Magazine.