US Closes 2010 With $14,025,215,218,708 And 52 Cents In Debt

Zero Hedge ^ | 01/03/2011 15:49 -0500 | Tyler Durden

[DeaconBenjamin]

The ability of the human mind to grasp large numbers is an interesting subject. In When Money Dies (pdf here) Fergusson mentions "the delirium of milliards," a reference to the limits of numeric cognition:

“The delirium of milliards [i.e., billions]” was a phrase of Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau’s coining. “The majority of statesmen and financiers think in terms of paper,” he wrote. “They sit in their offices and look at papers .. and on those papers are written figures which again represent papers. A milliard comes easily and trippingly to the tongue, but no one can imagine a milliard. Does a wood contain a milliard leaves? Are there milliard blades of grass in a meadow?”

Part of the reason 1923 was a seminal year in Germany was because it ruptured the natural boundary between the tangible and the abstract. "Millions" and "billions" became part of everyday life, the numbers indistinguishable from each other and essentially meaningless beyond how many eggs a new, larger number would buy each day. Recall Thomas Mann:

The market woman who demanded in a dry tone "one hundred billion" mark for a single egg had lost during inflation her ability to be amazed at anything. Since that time nothing was so mad or so atrocious that it could have caused any awe in people anymore.

Canetti took this a step further. He argued that the "delirium" infected psychology on both a national and individual level, and suggested that it paved the way for mass atrocities by making large numbers -- removed from their underlying reality and therefore their consequences -- routine in the bureaucracy. The broader effect was a sort of culturalization of fiscal values. It's an interesting theory. Hitler's speeches and Nazi literature in general -- starting with "a thousand years" -- were peppered with the language of large numbers. Germans found it mesmerizing and, propitiously for the Nazis, abstract.

It took years for the psychological damage of 1923 to become obvious. As millions and billions and trillions get batted around casually in the context of a similar national trauma, we'll see what else becomes "purely symbolic" and "easy to ignore" down the road.

"The Money Becomes Purely Symbolic"

[Redcitizen]

The hope is that we will only have four years of this.