Paying the bailout piper
“It’s difficult to quantify the costs” of the $700 billion “mother of all bailouts,” says Daniel Gross in Slate, not to mention the taxpayer money put up for Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG , and to insure money market funds. It is “almost certain” that these bailouts will cost tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars, but it’s hard to know, because nobody with any authority has said how they plan to pay for them. Some sort of bailout is probably “of vital importance to the nation’s economy,” but like all important national projects, we have to pay for it. And unless “the laws of mathematics are repealed,” that means raising taxes or cutting spending. So, which will it be, and what are the details? Nobody’s saying.
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