The bailout: A hundred billion here, there, everywhere

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The numbers coming out of Washington in the last few weeks have been so huge, it all begins to sound like Monopoly money.

Too bad it’s all real, and mostly coming from taxpayers’ pockets -- if not right away, then down the line.

This seemed like the perfect set-up for the famous quote from Everett Dirksen, Illinois’ Republican senator from 1951 to 1969, about government spending in his era: ‘A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.’

But according to Wikiquote, the quote was fabricated. ‘Oh, I never said that,’ Dirksen supposedly told someone who asked about the line. ‘A newspaper fella misquoted me once, and I thought it sounded so good that I never bothered to deny it.’

Of course, a billion here or a billion there is chump change in the current debacle.

Here isa handy tally from Merrill Lynch & Co. economists of the money now committed as part of the financial-system bailout:

--- Treasury commitment to buy mortgage-related assets from banks: $700 billion.

--- Treasury capital commitment to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: up to $200 billion.

--- Expansion of temporary dollar ‘swap’ lines with foreign central banks: $180 billion.

--- Treasury fortifying of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet: $100 billion.

--- Federal Reserve loan to American International Group: $85 billion.

--- Treasury commitment to insure money market mutual funds: $50 billion.

--- Federal Reserve loans to banks via discount window: $33 billion.

--- Federal Reserve loans to securities dealers: $20 billion.

--- Treasury initial planned purchases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage securities: $10 billion.

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