Everything’s in Billions, These Days

December 14th, 2009

How much is a billion, exactly?

Take a look at the headlines. “Abu Dhabi Gives Dubai $10 Billion for Use on Debt.”

“U.S. Could See $13 – 14 Billion Profit on Citi: Official.” This word – billion – is all over the place. “Tiger Woods, the billion dollar sportsman.” Or he was. Everything seems to be at least a billion dollars these days. Has your child asked you to explain one billion yet? When we were kids there was almost no such word. The upper limit of our vocabulary and our imagination was about a million. There were few millionaires around and we knew all their names.

Billions are everywhere

These days the word ‘billion’ is on the front page of every newspaper every day. Look at this: “Exxon’s Natural Gas Holdings Grow With $31 Billion Deal.” There’s a chocolate deal going on with Cadbury’s for an amount of about 17 billion dollars. That’s a big pile of chocolate! French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday unveiled details of a 35 billion Euro ($52 billion) government-backed spending program.

The one billion dollar investigation

What exactly is this billion that everyone is writing about? I decided to investigate.

How long would it take to count to one billion?

If you count one number every second without stopping until you reach a billion, the task would take you 31 years, 259 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes and 40 seconds.

How much is a billion in time?

Here are some ideas to stun you:
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

And a billion dollars?

At the rate our government is spending money, a billion dollars lasts only 8 hours and 20 minutes.

A billion dollars is a lot of cash. Actually, that depends on who you speak to. Bill Gates made a cool 50 billon last year. According to Forbes there were 793 billionaires in the world in 2005.

And then there’s Mr. Madoff and other people’s billions

Bernard Madoff allegedly siphoned billion of dollars from the world’s economy. When you say it like that, it sounds like a kid’s game of Robin Hood or Ali Baba. It means that if the entire 7 billion person population of the world lined up in front of Madoff, every man, woman and child would hand over about 7 dollars as they passed him. Where has it all gone?

How much space would 50 billion dollars fill?

If one took 50 million dollars home and tried to hide it, he would have a problem. 50 billion spread over a football field would bury the players in about 30 feet of money.

Back to reality

After that brief excursion into the world of the billions it’s back to the real world where a small overdraft at the bank can lead to many woes.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 10:53 am and is filed under Economy, Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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