The year 2010 is nearly over.  What happened?  A fair number of celebrities died, a few videos went totally viral, and a few trends were established.  That’s what I get from the nooze, at least.

But what happened economically?  It turns out to be not much.  That is what everyone is complaining about, too.  I’ll do my best to explain just what nothing looks like as colorfully as possible because what we all expect from 2011 is something.  Not that anyone knows what it is, just that it won’t be this blah.

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The end of the year is as good of a time as any to look back and summarize what happened over the last year.  In the process of doing that I came across a tidbit of information that clearly deserves a post of its own.

From March 2008 through 2009 the Federal Reserve acted quickly.  Most people weren’t even aware of the crisis until October, but the Fed was on it.  Emergency overnight loans at low interest rates were the cornerstone of their effort, quietly fronting interest-free scratch to investment houses that were in deep trouble.

How much did they loan out?  Sen Bernie Sanders sponsored a bill that forced the Fed to tell us.  It turns out it was $9 Trillion – that’s money on top of the $4.7 Trillion that we knew was used to get the economy rolling.  All together the total “stimulus” is about 1 year’s total production in the USofA.

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