IF A WINGNUT SAYS WE ARE PLAYING THE FEAR CARD ABOUT THE ECONOMY...

casually bring up Goldman Sachs recent estimate of the ultimate size of the Big Shitpile:

Cost of shoring up US banks may be in trillions
Fri Jan 30, 2009 10:22am GMT
By Emily Kaiser

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The cost of restoring confidence in U.S. financial firms may reach $4 trillion (2.8 trillion) if President Barack Obama moves ahead with a "bad bank" that buys up souring assets.

Goldman Sachs estimated that it would take on the order of $4 trillion to buy troubled mortgage and consumer debt. That number could shrink if the program were limited to only certain loans or banks, but it could also grow if other asset classes such as commercial real estate loans were included.

Goldman Sachs economists said ideally the public sector would step in to remove the hardest-to-value assets, which would alleviate nagging worries about future losses and hopefully help get lending going again.

"Unfortunately, with an unprecedented meltdown in mortgage credit and a deep recession in the broader economy, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the value of almost every asset," they wrote in a note to clients.