Friday 27 February 2009

What's a Trillion?


A one, with twelve noughts after it.

1,000,000,000,000.

According to Wikipedia humans have been around for about 40,000 years. Not long really. The last neanderthal man was still grunting around 30,000 years ago, so 40,000 years seems generous.


Some simple maths. 40,000 years * 365 days * 24 hours * 60 minutes = 210,240,000,000.

Thats about one fifth of one trillion.

To get this in perspective, if Adam (Eve's bloke) had opened a non interest paying account at the beginning of humanity and saved a pound a minute, he'd have a fifth of a trillion quid now. But he'd have to keep saving saving for another twenty thousand years to able to buy the toxic debt we all just insured for "Sir" Freds RBS.

If Adam had been particularly thrifty, and saved a fiver a minute, he'd have a whole trillion now. About two thirds of current debt in the UK.

Lets have another perspective on a trillion

It would take a jet plane flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.

One more (further contributions gratefully received).

According to geologists the planet we live on, Earth, (Bankers and politicians live on another planet) formed about 4.54 billion years ago. If God him/herself had started saving a dollar a day on the first day of the planet, that would be $1.66 trillion now. So not really enough to pay off UK indebtedness. And a bit less than the projected difference between US government spending and revenues, for the next fiscal year.

Happy Days :-)


1 comment:

  1. Fantastic post. Right on the money (sorry for the pun...)

    ReplyDelete