That is the figure posited by L. Randall Wray as being the total amount of dollars distributed by the Federal Reserve in response to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC)
From Huffington Post:
L. Randall Wray: Let's Make a Deal: The Bail Out of Wall Street in Unusual and Exigent Circumstances
Posted: 02/16/2012 5:11 pm
In any case, the Fed's actions went far beyond even this -- to include highly unusual actions that are reasonably characterized as a "bail-out" of institutions that were probably insolvent. And the volume of such intervention is truly unprecedented. We have already covered that ground, in my reports of the findings of Andy Felkerson and Nicola Matthews (Felkerson 2011). So I will not repeat the discussion of our estimate that the Fed lent and spent (in asset purchases) over $29 trillion cumulatively. Instead we will focus on the most troubling facilities included in that overall number.
However before proceeding note that for comparison, after the "Great Crash" of 1929, the Fed lent to 123 institutions a total of $23 million in today's dollars between 1932-36. You would need to add six zeroes to the Fed's response to the Great Crash to get close to its response to the GFC! The word "unprecedented" really does not adequately describe the Fed's intervention to rescue financial institutions. In the beginning of 2008 the Fed's balance sheet was $926 billion, of which 80% of its assets were US Treasury bonds; in November 2010 its balance sheet had reached $2.3 trillion, of which almost half of its assets were MBSs. Over the next year it ramped-up its purchases of treasuries (and reduced its use of the special facilities) so that its balance sheet was close to $3 trillion -- three times larger than it was on the eve of the crisis.
And still there is no end in sight.
This is the report referenced in that first paragraph
$29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed’s Bailout by Funding Facility and Recipient
I find the figure astonishing. The "Detailed Look" has lots of graphs and charts showing exactly where the money went. It starts with the Term Auction Facility a the start of the meltdown in 2007 and continues from there.
I had been previously gobsmacked by the 7.7 Trillion Bailout as reported by Bloomberg in November - this completely dwarfs that.
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks 13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress
I am not an expert in finance, so I will have to confine my individual commentary to "Holy Sh*t!" and leave it to others to analyze and explain this information and to put it into context for the rest of us.
But I will say, again as a layman, that it is shocking to me that the US has all the money in the world for the worlds' banks and apparently none leftover for the US taxpayer. It also makes it a lot harder for me to swallow the "austerity" and "shared sacrifice" kabuki and the threats to Medicare and Social Security and Unemployment and every other aspect of our safety nets, under the guise of being "fiscally responsible" while we're running the printing presses night and day on behalf of the banksters.