Back during the throes of the S&L collapse, I recall the number $500 billion being tossed around as the total tab for that bailout. I haven't found any citations from that time, but that's the number that stuck in my head (please correct me if I'm wrong).
Now I'm reading that the actual final cost was $125 billion. If the "experts" could be off by that much about a situation that was seemingly much less complex than the current mess, how can they claim any credibility this time?
In the mid-80's, when the PC business was exploding, the software company I worked for had a hot product that the computer manufacturers badly wanted to work on their systems. They kept asking how much we would charge to adapt it (a relatively easy task). No matter how big a price tag we proposed, they never blinked. Our head of sales said he had a competition going among his staff to see who could name the biggest number in a meeting with one of these companies without cracking a smile. I wonder if the Wall Street boyz had a similar competition, and the winner came up with $700 billion.