European banks’ toxic assets may amount to $25 trillion. I really have no concept of how much 25 trillion of anything is, but it’s a whole lot.
By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Last Updated: 3:50PM GMT 11 Feb 2009“Estimates of total expected asset write-downs suggest that the budgetary costs – actual and contingent – of asset relief could be very large both in absolute terms and relative to GDP in member states,” the EC document, seen by The Daily Telegraph, cautioned.
“It is essential that government support through asset relief should not be on a scale that raises concern about over-indebtedness or financing problems.”
The secret 17-page paper was discussed by finance ministers, including the Chancellor Alistair Darling on Tuesday.
National leaders and EU officials share fears that a second bank bail-out in Europe will raise government borrowing at a time when investors – particularly those who lend money to European governments – have growing doubts over the ability of countries such as Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Britain to pay it back.
This amount does not include what American banks have gotten themselves into. Scared yet?
UPDATE: InstaPundit links to the answer of, “how much is a trillion?”
IOWAHAWK: Mathematicians Discover Largest Number.
An international mathematics research team announced today that they had discovered a new integer that surpasses any previously known value “by a totally mindblowing shitload.” Project director Yujin Xiao of Stanford University said the theoretical number, dubbed a “stimulus,” could lead to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and Chicago asphalt contracting.
SCARED yet, Chris?!? I was scared in the middle of September!
Now I think “catatonic” is a more apt description of my state.
A trillion, huh?
Chris – How’d you like to make $3600/hour, 24/7?
It’s only a buck a second, but pretty good money, even for a Greenwich realtor back when times were good.
~$600K/week, ~$31.5 million/year. A decent haul for a CEO/hedgie/master of the universe.
Stick it out for 32,000 years and you’ll have that trillion. Pre-tax, of course.
“I really have no concept of how much 25 trillion of anything is, but it’s a whole lot.”
It is about two times the annual US GDP… or put another way, a very, very big number. It is also about two times the GDP of the European Union.
Gee, Pulled, if I could defer taxes on that income via an IRA, it could add up to some real money after, say 20,000 years!
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A trillion is a a lot of anything but in monetary terms it pales when contrasted to a porkillion.
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A Trillion dollars is nothing, just wait until Obama dips his beak in for a another drink next month and inflation takes off and it cost $5 Billion for a loaf of bread. You’ll soon be thing back to the good old days when you could buy a Senatorial seat for only
$500,000 or pay off Chris Dodd for a few points on his loan or buy a house with no money down and flip it the next day for a 50% profit. Why when Obama finishes up we’ll all be making a Trillion a week.
And then when I write a check for a trillion and a half for Valium, I’ll have to remember how many zeroes to put on the check. I think a lot of people will starve because they won’t remember the right amount of zeroes in a trillion.We need a gov’t program now to deal with this problem.
Just to get an idea of how much $25 trillion is let’s do a little modeling. BTW thanks to Thomas Sowell for this idea. Assume we have access to a time machine. $1 will allow you to travel back in time by 1 second. How far will $25 trillion allow you to travel? Well, assuming I have manipulated all the zeros properly, you would arrive in approximately 790,000 BC. That’s a “way back” machine!
Well, if a dollar bill is 0.003 inches thick when tightly compressed, which is what I just got when I put a caliper to a stack of eight bills, 25 trillion would go around the earth about 48 times. Looked at another way, you could make a two-lane highway around the equator out of one dollar bills stacked on edge.
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1 trillion is taking 10% of the net worth of ten million millionaires and yes 10 million millionaire households is about what we have in the United States as of 2009.
Oh my gosh, have we accidentally through the magic of math discovered how to stimulate the entire economy without increasing the debt to the tax payer? A one time flat tax, ooops I mean millionaire stimulus to invest in America, the wealthiest are known to spend the least hence lets re-allocate that money where it matters…
lol – now that is a joke, American millionaires investing in America.
In fact there are 3,000,000 millionaires in the U.S. http://www.nypost.com/seven/06252008/news/worldnews/world_of_wealth_117010.htm, and I believe you dropped three zeros in your caclulation – you’d have to take $333,333,333 from your chickens and since we have at least 200 Senators counted among those 3,000,000, I don’t think they’d stand for it.
Of course not, my post is meant to be a joke and to just change the perspective on the issue.
A trillion is 12 zeros. A million is 6 zeros. A million times a million is a trillion.
As far as the number of US millionaire households, I am not sure if the NY post is the best spot to check but fine, I’ll take your number.
Lets make it a one time 30% flat tax. Low and behold that is $300,000 from one millionaire. 300,000 times 3,000,000 people is 900,000,000,000 (which is 900 billion by the way – just shy of one trillion)
Again it will never happen but I think the point should be made that there are other ways of looking at this stimulus issue that do not involve increasing an already huge debt…