A Carefully-Planned, Not-At-All-Slapped-Together Figure Pulled Out of Thin Air

Radley Balko | September 25, 2008

I don't know about you, but when this administration says, "just trust us," I think we'd all be justified to run screaming in the other direction.

[White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony] Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.

That was Tuesday morning.  Tuesday afternoon an article went up at Forbes.com with this passage:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."