Just how much of your money has the government flung at Wall Street? $1,164 billion so far: $700 billion bailout package for Wall Street; $200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; $150 billion in “stimulus”checks; $85 billion for AIG; $29 billion for Bear Stearns.

– Despite the vast sums involved to prop up Wall Street Europan stocks followed Asia and New York lower this morning.

– US futures are down.

“The creature that destroys value.” This is how Republican Congressman Ron Paul described the Federal Reserve on CNBC’s Kudlow & Company.

Paul also calls the Fed and “illegal institution” and “an immoral institution.”

For the most part, the mainstream press seems to have decided that the Fed- and Treasury-led bailouts of Wall Street finest are scary but necessary. But the big picture, says Paul, is that the dollar, once backed by gold and then by Treasury bonds, is now backed by junk mortgage securities that nobody wants. And this is a nightmare scenario for the dollar…

New Total Fed Credit (”the magical fount from whence spews new credit, which becomes new money and a new debt when somebody borrows this new credit”) is down, surprisingly, down by $5.5 billion this week. This is theoretically bad news, says The Mogambo Guru.

Yesterday, central banks launched a coordinated effort to flood global money markets with U.S. dollars in hopes of easing strained financial systems in danger of freezing up entirely. However, many analysts see this as only a short-term solution that will lower overnight lending rates but fail to assist financial institutions with longer-term cash needs, says Jason Simpkins  in Money Morning.

– The US government has stepped in to fix the financial markets yet again with what the Washington Post describes as a “massive intervention” package. The administration plan, which received bipartisan support, “involves using hundreds of billions of dollars in government funding to buy bad loans, leaving banks with more money and fewer problems,” according to the paper.

– The bad debt plan may cost taxpayers up to $1 trillion, says CNBC.

– The Securities Exchange Commission further boosted confidence with a temporary ban on short sales of 799 financial institutions.

“There’s more distressed debt trading right now than at any other point in history,” says Keith Fitz-Gerald in Money Morning. Nearly $184 billion worth. Based on historical precedent, Keith says this means we could be in for a record number of bankruptcy filings – “including some of the biggest corporate bankruptcy filings in history.”

Dave Gonigam says the Fed’s rescue of AIG (NYSE:AIG) is just the tip of the iceberg. “The 80% stake that Uncle Sam is taking in AIG is a whole lot of garbage the Fed might have to print money to cover – $85 billion. But it’s pocket change compared to the potential closure of 1000 banks (Wilbur Ross’s estimate) or 4500 banks (Ken Lewis).

– The Fed, desperate to relieve the panic that has gripped the credit markets, has almost quadrupled the amount of dollars central banks can auction around the world to $247 billion.

– According to Bloomberg: “The Fed increased the amount of dollars that the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and other counterparts can offer from $67 billion ‘to address the continued elevated pressures in U.S. dollar short-term funding markets.’ The Bank of England, the Bank of Canada and the Swiss National Bank also participated.”

– This flood of cash seems to have cheered Wall Street. “US stock futures pointed to a stronger start. S&P 500 futures rose 16 points to 1,178.90 and Nasdaq 100 futures improved 21.25 points to 1,668.25. Dow…

One man’s loss is another man’s gain. Jason Simpkins reports that Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS) is buying up the ‘healthy’ remains of Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) at bargain prices, expanding and diversifying its operations in the process. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs‘ (NYSE:GS) Q3 earnings were dreadful but still beat analyst expectations.

As the mainstream media gasps in horror at the mess Wall Street has made for itself, Bill Bonner says the writing has been on the wall for more than a decade. That’s because the idea that holding stocks for the long haul carried virtually no risk has been so ingrained in investors’ psyches that they have been willing to bid up stock prices to the point where they were all risk and no reward…