I have to wonder about these adjusted for inflation figures and what exactly they take into account.

Ah, well, I guess I’ll just trust that CNBC doesn’t go out of its way to include anything and everything that could fall under the umbrella of having been in close proximity with the financial crisis. Cough.

The figure that this whole thing will cost us is no doubt vast, but 4.28 trillion dollars? First, they provide no context for the numbers they’re pooling; even introductory statistics stresses that all confines of the sample be accounted for (unless it’s purely observational, which it isn’t, because they’re presenting to us something they claim has already happened). Second, they provide no account for what exactly they’re determining is a “complicated cocktail of budgeted dollars, actual spending, guarantees, loans, swaps and other market mechanisms”. How does one account for a “guarantee”? At the very best it would be an approximation of future expenditures. How does one account for “swaps”? Last time I checked, that involved the trade of equal value goods…it isn’t a calculable expenditure (no assets are lost). There are other fallacies presented in this article, but I have an essay that’s due.

Overall, I hate these types of articles. The mind can comprehend vast sums of money without someone holding its hand; 700 to 900 BILLION dollars alone is already unfathomable enough to make someone’s head hurt. Creating little tally marks and cutely comparing them to past circumstances does nothing but beat a dead horse. In reality, they’re no different than the news segments of the 90s that re-enacted multitudes of “possible” scenarios and endings of hostage situations or kidnappings or high speed chases. This “Tab”, or however they want to justify it, is sham journalism of the modern era. I’d imagine efforts would be better spent stopping a train wreck than striving to capture it frame by frame.