NEW YORK - November 17, 2008 - Given the speed at which the federal government is throwing money at the financial crisis, the average taxpayer, never mind Member of Congress, might not be faulted for losing track of how much money has been spent.

CNBC, however, has been paying very close attention and keeping a running tally of actual spending, as well as the commitments involved.

Try $4.28 trillion dollars. That's $4,284,500,000,000; which is more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation, based on computations from a variety of estimates and sources.

Not only is it an astronomical amount of money, it’s a complicated cocktail of budgeted dollars, actual spending, guarantees, loans, swaps and other market mechanisms by the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury, and other offices of government, taken over roughly the last year, based on government data and news releases. Strictly speaking, not every cent is a direct result of what's called the financial crisis, but it is all arguably related to it.

Some 68% of the sum falls under the Federal Reserve's umbrella, while another 16 percent is under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), as defined under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, signed into law in early October.