“How much did the financial crisis cost us? Having an answer would be good to know because the financial industry complains—as you would expect—that stricter regulation of their practices will carry an economic cost. And so it might. But is the cost greater or less than the benefit?

Better Markets, a group dedicated to lobbying for stricter financial reform, has an estimate of $12.8 trillion. That’s a lot. Where’d they get it? Well, first they totaled up the 2008-2018 “output gap,” the total amount of lost production due to the recession, and found it was $7.6 trillion. Then they threw in an extra $5.2 trillion as the amount of output we would have lost if not for the “extraordinary fiscal and monetary policy actions” undertaken to prevent collapse…”