Tallying Up the Bank Bailout

Thanks to the journos at ProPublica.org we now have a completely sortable list of the federal bailout money trail. You can now easily slice and dice to your heart’s content to see how your tax dollars are being spent:

By Size of Handout: Sure you can name the big three bailout recipients. (Okay if you’ve chosen to block it out: AIG $70 billion, Bank of America $52.5 billion, Citigroup $50 billion. So far.) But here’s the stuff that cocktail party bragging rights are made of: What’s the smallest bailout on record to date? That would be the Freeport State Bank of Kansas with a $301,000 handout.

By State: Financial institutions in 48 States, The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have backed up their donation trucks. Care to take a guess at the only two states that have yet to join in the bailout-arama? Answer at the bottom of this post•

By Type: Banks Private and Banks Public, Auto Companies and the kitchen-sink “Financial Services” sector are sorted into special groupings.

You can check out ProPublica’s Ultimate Bailout Guide here.

Now we’d be remiss not to point out that our tech-savvy transparent-touting President is not to be outdone. The FinancialStability.gov website is now packing an impressive interactive map that one-ups ProPublica by aggregating each state’s tally. California is at the top of the list with $27.6 billion. That works out to more than $800 per resident, but that said, the bulk of Cali’s haul-$25 billion-went to bail out the national Wells Fargo Bank. But just because we can, consider that the $8.1 million doled out to Wyoming financial institutions amounts to a paltry $17or so per resident. You can see your state’s running tab, and even drill down to city-level data, here.

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•The two states yet to receive bank bailout money: Montana and Vermont.

-- Carla Fried