General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A question for Obama and\or his supporters here: [View all]coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)neighborhood of $700 billion, IIRC, for the first round. Those funds were part of a much larger federal budget deficit for 2008-09, a deficit funded by the Treasury Department and FED selling bonds to investors. Ironically, when the government sells bonds, the action of so doing actually 'destroys' money, i.e., reduces the monetary supply, by removing said funds from the monetary supply in return for bonds which it exchanges.
Not sure where your '4 trillion' figure comes from. I have seen the figure of '3.6 trillion' mentioned somewhere, but don't recall where.
Ah, yes, the 'things of value' had no value. That's is why the program was referred to variously as 'cash for trash' or other such unflattering labels. It helps to distinguish, though, between 'nominal' and 'real' here. The 'trash' the banks exchanged had nominal, i.e., face, values. Those tranches of CDOs had a face value which was used as its collateral value during the bailout (a subject of much controversy, IIRC), but the tranches had much less 'real value' (which is normally what collateral bases itself upon).