A good metric for just how much of our tax dollars are being spent by the government.
From Bloomberg:
Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 TrillionCounting down the days until 2010 and 2012...
The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.
New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation�s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.
