Trillion: It's the new billion

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.freep.com/article/20090315/NEWS07/903150500

Both are unimaginable sums unless you can visualize, say, a stack of dollar bills 68 miles high, and that's just a billion.

A trillion is a thousand times that: greenbacks piled an entirely inconceivable quarter of the way to the moon.

However, a trillion dollars -- a figure once so abstract that it appeared only in long-term Social Security projections -- comes up like crocuses these days.

• U.S. households lost $5.1 trillion of their worth in the fourth quarter of last year, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.

• The world's billionaires lost $2 trillion last year, Forbes magazine reported Wednesday.

• Then there's the $3.6-trillion federal budget proposed for 2010.

• And its projected $1.2-trillion deficit.

• And $1.2 trillion in derivatives that ward-of-the-state American International Group insured.

[CrispyQ]

1. Love the title!

Big Numbers




;)