Where did the $700B figure come from?

You know where that very important $700-billion figure came from?

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday - see this Forbes article. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

They made it up to be sufficiently ginormous to frighten everyone into rapid action. And it worked. --- Andrew Malcolm

You know, it's kinda, sorta like, the 6 million holocaust number....