The cost of the Financial Bailout or the Great Heist has been pegged at or around $11.6 Trillion. Please give or take a hundred billion here or there for accounting quirks and shenanigans.
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aJwZIBMSGsek
To Put this into a greater perspective, lets take a look at other US expenditures adjusted for inflation:
The Marshall Plan ($115.3B)
Louisiana Purchase ($217B)
The Race to the Moon ($237B)
S&L Crisis ($256B)
Korean War ($454B)
FDR's New Deal ($500B)
The disastrous Invasion of Iraq ($597B)
Vietnam War $698B)
Total outlay to NASA ($851.2B)
WWII ($3.6T)
Add em all up you get to about $7.5Trillion or so. Roughly more then half of our current GDP.
Now that $11.6T figure is not all lost, most of it is loans backed by collateral to banks and investment firms.
It would be nice if the Fed actually had some accountability and let us know what type of collateral is being used and to whom the money is specifically going to.
At the moment, I have suspicions that a large amount of the collateral is garbage and will never be worth more than 30 to 40 cents on the dollar. The Fed counters this by stating that the quality is good and is backed by secured assets. To this I say: Prove it! Open your books!
In the end the Fed will be lucky to get 1/2 of the total outlay back.
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