Yes. "Injected into the economy" could mean anything. Even leaving it in huge piles on street corners counts as injection. At the other end of the scale, no money could be changing hands at all and the $800b could be an accounting trick with adjusting the future, potential value of bits of paper. We also don't know where the money is cominng from, whether it is in bonds, conditional pledges to buy stuff the the future, actual printed money, etc., etc.

 Under the freedom of information act, you have the right to request any info on where this money is going and recieve an answer.

And the conservatives tried a side-stepping approach in the 1980s recession - that didn't work either (I don't know if it counts as deregulation, but it's essentially the opposite of what Labour is doing now).

Actually, we don't. There is a clause in that act which says that anything that could be economically sensitive (or something to that effect) will not be released. Several government deals with contractors have been kept secret in this way. The government could easily claim that.

 Ah, shame, one of the best acts to have gone through (far more important than the bill of rights, imo), was handicapped, nice.

Financial instutitions are also exempt. How convenient...

Here are the FOIA exemptions:

(1) classified national defense and foreign relations information,
(2) internal agency rules and practices,
(3) information that is prohibited from disclosure by another law,
(4) trade secrets and other confidential business information,
(5) inter-agency or intra-agency communications that are protected by legal privileges,
(6) information involving matters of personal privacy,
(7) certain information compiled for law enforcement purposes,
(8) information relating to the supervision of financial institutions, and
(9) geological information on wells.

Um, what? Is it because of all the coins at the bottom of them?

 rofl, I lol'd hard both at the legislation, and your comment.

I mean, seriously?

Think terrorists poisoning the water supply.

To FishyJoe: Isn't the total cost way more than 1.5T with Fannie and Freddy and AIG's ever expanding bridge loan, and I probably am missing a lot too (what about Bear Stearn? How much did that cost to the US government?).

General rethorical questions to everybody: The problem is too many people with mortgages are overleveraged, leading to foreclosures and too many banks are overleveraged leading to insolvency/bankrupcy. The government's current solution is not destroying that debt (by allowing those foreclosures/bankrupcies) which, granted, would be painful but to move it to its own balance sheet. The question is:

   What do you think will happen once the government itself is as leveraged as the failed banks were and foreign investors realise it?

Can I just give all my money to the government and they can take care of all my shit then?

I mean damn.

Seriously, they just need to let the banks fail... and bail out the employees.  Not the banks.  Make sure these people are working something that will actually fix the damn economy.  (aside from those that caused the problem in the first place.)

Yeah, it's a shame the few fiscal conservatives that were in control of the government got kicked out by focusing on Clinton lieng about a blowjob.