Five. Trillion. Dollars.

For all the fury over Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion emergency economic relief fund, it seems downright puny when compared to the running total of the government’s response to the credit crisis.

According to CreditSights, a research firm in New York and London, the U.S. government has put itself on the hook for some $5 trillion, so far, in an attempt to arrest a collapse of the financial system.

All of this to prop up private institutions that made bad investments and failed. Anyone else want a hand at the trough? Got a $200,000 mortgage? Heck, what’s another $200K when we’ve already spent $5 trillion.