Orders Of Magnitude - Your money at work in the News

My education is deeply rooted in science. Not engineering. Not Social Science. Just plain ol' 'for the love of figuring things out' science. One thing I used to enjoy because it really resonated with my persona is the idea of 'orders of magnitude' or how big things are in relation to other things.

For example:

Q: How big is the Sun?
A1: Approximately 100 earths will span the diameter of the sun.

I would say, "The sun is 100 times as wide is the earth" or "The earth is about 1/100th the diameter of the sun"

Follow?

Lets now do that with money.

1. In october of '08 our federal government decided to invest approximately 700 Billion US Dollars in bad (or "troubled") bank assets around the nation. Whether we like it or not... our representatives at the federal level did this.

2. In November of '08 our federal government decided to give AIG 150 Billion US dollors of that $700B pool.

* I would say "our government gave AIG almost 1/5th of the TARP money.

3. in March of 09 us tax payers found out AIG paid $170 Million in bonus to executives of the the now naitionally invested company.

OH THE OUTRAGE!!!!! seriously, it's all we've heard about for two weeks now.

*I would say "AIG spent about 1/1000 the of money we invested in the company (as tax payers) on the executives that stayed true to their contract."

Is that right? 1/1000th? Is that what all the fuss is about? 1/10th of 1%? For ever dollar we loaned them we're trying to recoup less than a penny?!?!

4. In March, the Federal Reserve "printed" (put into the money supply) 1.25 Trillion US Dollars in one day with zero oversight, audit measures or liability requirements.

I would say:

AIG Execs = 170Mil

AIG TARP allocation = 1000 x AIG Execs

TARP = 5 x AIG TARP Allocation

Federal Reserve = 2 x TARP (In one day)

Help me out people... is my math right? Please correct me where I'm wrong. Math in public isn't always good.

Am I right to question why the media is so concerned about this 170 Million Dollar bonus payouts instead of the real money in TARP and the Fed's unaccountable actions?

I seriously don't get it. They are distracting us from the real problems and all our representatives are doing is making things worse.