Posted on 10/11/2008 8:57:22 PM PDT by Lorianne
You know the economy is in trouble when economists start bandying around numeric terms previously associated with astronomy and particle physics. You can't open a newspaper these days without seeing the phrase "trillion dollars" placed in disturbing proximity to the word losses. According to the Nexis database, these terms appeared together in 1,774 English-language news reports between July and October 2008. During the same three-month period in 2007, they appeared in only 541, and during the same period in 2006, they appeared in only 316. Those were the good old days!
You may not even remember from grade-school arithmetic what comes after trillion. It isn't kajillion. (That's just a whimsical slang term for "unimaginably high number.") It's quadrillion. The phrase "quadrillion dollars" and the word losses appeared together in only two English-language news reports between July and October 2008, so no need to panic just yet. During the same three-month periods in 2007 and 2006, they appeared in one.
After quadrillion, you get quintillion, sextillion, and septillion. I'm relieved to report that the phrases "quintillion dollars," "sextillion dollars," and "septillion dollars" have yet to appear together with the word losses in any English-language news reports that I can find in Nexis. After septillion comes octillion, nonillion, and decillion. The phrase "octillion dollars" appears only once in Nexis (in a Sept. 27 snippet from the blog the Volokh Conspiracy). The phrases "nonillion dollars" and "decillion dollars" appear not at all, which suggests that even at this late date they defy human conceptualization. According to Slate's search engine, I am the first person ever to use any numeric terms above quintillion in this magazine.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Tim, it isn’t your money. Fiduciary gross negligence and fraud and perjury isn’t funny. Neither is WHY (beyond greed) those crimes and civil grievances have been committed.
Tim, is it even your Country?
Shucks, and I thought a whole lot of money was “Buckets Full”. It always sounded like alot to me, and I never put a number on it. :)
If the 27x/month devaluation of the Zaire dollar I recently read about continues, then the value of $1US in Zaire dollars would increase by one "word" approximately every 64 days (just over nine weeks). Since it passed "billion" awhile ago, that would suggest it would reach "decillion" in about 16 months. Not sure what the next word would be after that (last I checked, Google Calculator would only spell out quantities up to 2^42-1).
One thing that's curious, though: (2^52+13)-2^51 yields zero, but (2^52+14)-2^52 yields 14; does that seem like reasonable rounding behavior or is something strange?
My checkbook is 8 cents off. Geeesh!
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