Why this is different, and why it's not looking good for this country. The policies being followed will ruin this country, both financially and politically for decades, if not stopped.
| Date | Amount Billions | Bar Graph |
| Crash of 29: | $1.1 | |
| WWII: | $1.5 | |
| Cold War: | $1.5 | |
| Thru 1969: | $1.5 | |
| 1972: | $3.3 | |
| 86 S&L Crisis: | $8 | |
| 1999 Y2k: | $3.5 | |
| Dec 07: | $15.4 | |
| Jan 08:(1) | $45.7 | |
| Feb 08: | $60.2 | |
| Mar 08: | $94.5 | |
| Apr 08: | $135.4 | |
| May 08: | $155.8 | |
| Jun 08: | $171.3 | |
| Jul 08: | $165.7 | |
| Aug 08: | $168.1 | |
| Sep 08: | $290.1 | |
| Oct 08: | $648.3 | |
| Nov 08: | $689.7 | |
Note 1: Starting in January of 2008, and for the rest of the year, this is money the Treasury should never have spent! Congress should have stopped this! Not authorized more!
Have they stopped spending money? No! In fact, the "Stimulus package" being considered now, (Read: MORE suicidal debt, based on money this economy is not producing a tax base to support) as we go into Feb. '09, is somewhere between $800 and $900 Billion! This is complete lunacy.
"Artificially easy credit, rapid monetary growth, subsidized homeownership for people who cannot make the mortgage payments, exclusive privileges granted to dishonest bond-rating agencies, explicit and implicit government guarantees of bank accounts, bonds, and other financial assets. [It's] these policies and others that tend in the same direction have created our present economic difficulties. To suppose, and to act on the supposition, that precisely these same kinds of policies will repair the day is supreme folly. To augment these mistakes by expending a trillion borrowed dollars in new government outlays for whatever suits the grasping members of a totally corrupt Congress only compounds the folly on a cosmic scale." - Robert Higgs Feb. 4, 2009