Writing up some notes from my interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin a while ago, I come back to this passage in his book, Too Big To Fail. This is the moment when the team behind the $800bn US bailout of Wall Street are trying to come up with ways to justify a cost that they can through Congress to get permission to exceed the Treasury spending cap of $500bn:

“What about $1 trillion?” Kashkari said.
“We'll get killed,” Paulson said grimly.
“No way,” Fromer said, incredulous at the sum. “Not going to happen. Impossbile.”
“Okay,” Kashkari said. “How about $700 billion?”
“I don't know,” Fromer said. “That's better than $1 trillion.”
The numbers were at best, guestimates, and all three men knew it. The relevant figure would ultimately be the one that represented the most they could possibly ask from Congress without raising too many questions. Whatever the sum turned out to be, they knew they could count on Kashkari to perform some sort of mathematical voodoo to justify it. “There's about $11 trillion of residential mortgages, there's about $3 trilion of commerical mortgages, that leads to $14 trillion, roughly five per cent of that is $700 bilion.” As he plucked numbers from thin air even Kashkari laughed at the absurdity of it all.

The all-knowing central planner in action.