The jury is out on whether it was late Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen who said, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money."

But that statement could not be more appropriate to today when tens of billions, nay hundreds of billions, of dollars are sloshing across the headlines, here as deficits and losses, there as government loans and bailouts.

Pretty soon we'll be talking about real money.

The latest to cross my radar screen is the news that it could cost $130 billion in bailout loans to keep General Motors and Chrysler going, according to CNNMoney.com

The two companies have already received some $17.5 billion in loans. Now they are asking for an additional $22 billion.

And that's on top of the $25 billion that Congress approved last year to help them convert to fuel efficient technology.

To get to the $130 billion figure, CNN figured in loan guarantees to auto parts suppliers, auto dealers, a line of credit requested by Ford plus tax credits of a "Cash for Clunkers" program and interest deductions on auto loans.

What to make of all this?

I confess, I am completely bamboozled by this whole new world of billions here and billions there. That hit me when Bernie Madoff's $50 billion scam was exposed. I could not, and truth be told still have not, come to terms with the scale of that crime.

To steal $50 billion is beyond greedy; It's socipathic on the scale of the fictional villains in James Bond movies. And they are all clearly out of their minds!

Certainly it was that kind of sociopathic behavior that drove us off the edge, with financiers and money/credit lenders, removed from all sense of reality let alone morality, cutting and dicing sub-prime mortgages until they were chips on a monopoly board that reaped untold wealth as they were resold and resold in a global Ponzi scheme.

And now as we try to put the pieces back together, the extent of the delusion can only be writ in figures that confuse and frighten the mind. Billions and billions and billions.

And what's this - President Obama predicting a $1.75 trillion deficit this year?

When and where will it all end? And what will the world look like when it does?

Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke earlier this week said the U.S. economy was going through a massive restructuring and that we could well come out of it later this year.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, GM reported a $9.6 billion loss while burning through $6.2 billion of cash in the fourth-quarter of last year, new home sales fell to a new low and new jobless claims jumped 667,000 with more than 5 million of our fellow citizens now claiming unemployment benefits.

And yet, and yet, the Bernie Madoff Wannabes are still out there, ever ready to bring the world down to make a buck. Only the other day I heard a radio spot offering financing to all comers.

"Bad credit? No credit? No problem!"

Civics 101 anyone? Please!

- Peter C.T. Elsworth