Today’s plan to bailout automakers comes in at $17.4 billion. That’s about $178 per U.S. family, or $57 per person.

It’s not clear that all this money is going to be spent outright – it may be in the form of loans (and who knows whether the loans would be repaid). So don’t treat that as a hard and fast cost estimate, but at least you have a sense of how much of your money is at risk.

Meanwhile, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of a congressional oversight panel for the bailout, has gone on record criticizing how the bailout is being handled.

They could have asked me . . . .