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Adding up all government interventions
Since the beginning of the financial crisis, nearly $12 trillion was allocated in programs affecting the financial services industry. Today, the Federal Reserve announced a plan to cleanse toxic assets from bank balance sheets. Here’s the breakdown of all money spent since last year. I spent the day researching and realizing this graphic. Fun stuff.
[Updated at 2 p.m. March 24] The graphic was updated with reader comments, size of arrows were adjusted to reflect correct amounts. Thanks! Old version is here.
11 responses to “Adding up all government interventions”
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Great Infographics as usual:D
Recently I’ve been kind of obsessed with lots of information graphics posted on the Internet.
Though I’m a university student majoring in business in Japan, your works are great and never seen in any Japanese press. (They HAVE excel-like graphs though, it’s FAR from information graphics.)
If you have time, would you share your design process like, how to deal with data or how to integrate the data with visually- and reasonably-organized graphics?
or Would you recommend any books or other resources for beginners?
Thanks in advance. -
Simplicity,
I’ll make sure to post a list of books pretty soon.
Nick -
Smittydc March 24th, 2009 at 11:47
From an aesthetic point of view I like it a lot, but from a data perspective a few things bother me:
– the width of the lines isn’t consistently proportional to the amounts.
– a $4 Trillion “other”? That raises a lot of questions.
– is there a difference between the programs at the top that end in arrows and those at the bottom in blunt lines? Does that mean some of the spending programs are open ended, and others not? Both sets of lines seem to point to the unspent pot total.Obviously this stuff is complicated, so kudos for trying.
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Smitty,
Thanks for your note. You are right, i noticed some problem with the width. I will update today.
The lines going down are money still to be spent. The lines going to the right are spent already. -
I love sankeys. I wish I had a good opportunity to use them. I will have to think harder.
This one is pretty sweet, though I would have added the dollar value to the gov institutions as well. The money still available is an interesting way to segment that data. Very nice!
and some final nitpicking, but some of the diagonal lines don’t seem to match up well with their horizontal neighbors.
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Jess, Smitty, the graphic was updated. Thanks to you guys to highlight area for improvements.
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ghengis86 March 26th, 2009 at 13:05
my only comment, other than ‘great work!’ is that the Federal Reserve is a private entity, not a government institution. sort of a quasi-government contractor. maybe a note somehow to that point would be appropriate.
or not.
great job!
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Andras March 26th, 2009 at 13:28
Otherwise, it is wonderful and very educational. Congrats!!
Small suggestions:
Can you swap directions? What spent should go down (the drain).
Also, not $9 but $9T to go.
thanks.
8 Trackbacks / Pingbacks
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Symplicity00 March 23rd, 2009 at 21:32