Sweeteners to get the charge through Congress: US$140 billion.

NEW YORK -- There's an obsolete saying attributed to Everett Dirksen, the Illinois senator who dotted his speeches with colourful rants against direction borrowing: A billion here, a billion there, and fairly soon you're talking corporeal money. Not these days, you're not. The copse of figures hurled at Americans since Wall Street began to deliquesce down form month boggles the desire and crashes the calculator. We are dialect proper dull from numbers. Bailout of the U.S. economic system: US$700 billion.

Sweeteners to get the neb through Congress: US$140 billion. Federal accommodation to insurer AIG: US$85 billion. John McCain superintendence mortgage buyback proposal: US$300 billion. Billions and billions and billions and billions.

The Fed announced Wednesday it would advance AIG an additional US$37.5 billion, and population hardly flinched.

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