Treasury's Fuzzy Math

All week, politicians have been debating a proposed Treasury Department proposal to allow the U.S. government to spend $700 billion to bail out Wall Street firms in the hopes of staving off a financial meltdown.

So where did that $700 billion figure come from? The response a Treasury spokeswoman gave to Forbes.com on that question doesn't exactly inspire confidence: "It's not based on any particular data point," she said. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)