The $700,000,000,000 number. Has anyone...
 

...ever explained how they arrived at that specific number?

All I know is it's 2000 McDonalds Apple Pies for every American. That's the kind of math we understand.:D

$700B was the point at which Paulson's index finger crossed the plane of his colon.

Can you help me understand that a little better? How many cheeseburgers does that equate to?

Jim:

Just buy McDonalds then you can eat yourself to death!

Do I get 'em all at once or in installments?

Yes! Let me supersize that, OK?

fwiw, the stock-market lost more than that yesterday.

Yup; the market was clipped for about $1.2T yesterday and over $2T YTD.

Paper losses, but certainly much of it was "realized".

http://business.inquirer.net/money/breakingnews/view/20080930-163728/Stock-plunge-wipes-record-12-trillion-off-market-value

AH, "Paper losses" . . .isn't this what the crisis is all about? ...The properties are all still there...

Paulson seems to be hell-bent on falling the sky, if we don't give him more power. --the bleeding-heart idiots were even insisting that the bail-out bill had some money to fund more risky mortgages. These "experts" are reckless scum.

You've hit on the "problem" with investor psychology in today's stock market. Too many people do not think about their stock investments as "ownership in a company" with thoughts about how much that company will make and be able to pay in dividends.

Too many people see their holdings in the stock market as an effective equivalent to "cash."

(Sort of the way people haven't been looking at their houses as "a place to live" but instead have been seeing their homes as "an investment" or a "piggy bank" for needed cash.)

The whole country's investment psychology has been "screwed up" over the past decades. More realistic thinking needs to return to the markets.

Facing reality will be painful -- which is why some people are calling for the bailout; they want to maintain their "illusions" about what things are worth and want the government to "print" more money to maintain the fiction.

they should just all go to Vegas, cause that's what they are doing anyway, gambling, and getting cold feet while they are at it, it's not longer "investing"

at least in Vegas, if you loose big, you gonna get comped a suit and a buffet of sorts, no such luxery in Wall Street, when you loose there, you can go find a place in the gutter with the others, and hopefully somebody has a deck of cards, so you can play for toenail clippings

As we learned on our local news, it's a stack of dollar bills 373,000 times as tall as the tallest building in Downtown Denver. Thank goodness they helped us out, because I didn't really understand before.

You can order a double cheeseburger from the $1 menu and ask for it with Mac sauce and lettuce, no ketchup or mustard, comes to $1.50.

stop horsing around you guys, How many early 911S'es does that 700 B number buy!
8? 9?? more?