February 20, 2006
Monday AM

With all of the chatter about needing funds for this, that, and the other thing, the words "billIon dollars" is common place. Well, how much is a billion? Here is one way to look at the issue.

Imagine that you are to lend me a billion dollars and I am going to pay it back, without interest, at the rate of $1 per second. How long will it take to pay down the debt?

60 seconds times 60 minutes, times 24 hours, times 365.25 days, (leap year) get a total and divide a billion by that figure and you will see how long it takes to pay off the loan.

1,000,000,000/60x60x24x365.25 = 31.68 years. My Hewlett Packard calculator did not lie. Now figure what big ticket items like war and hurricanes cost to finance. The same model applies to oil profits and Wall St.

Chris Schelb
Haines, AK - USA

About: Chris Schelb writes he's "been around since pipeline days. Mostly up north, but over the years I have lived in KTN a couple or three times. First time through was in 75."

 

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