$50 trillion seems a lot, even in government work: <Rupert Murdoch ... noted that worldwide some "$50 trillion of personal wealth" had vanished since the crisis worsened with the Sept. 15 collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.>
$50,000,000,000,000 spread among 6,000,000,000 people would be $8,000 each. That's not much.
Since average humans are worth about $1 million each if turned loose and properly valued in tradable citizenship free enterprise capitalist self-determination realms, $8,000 write down is not even a blip in value.
There's a lot of huffing and puffing about the trivial financial crisis but it's barely worth newsprint in the grand scheme of things.
In the oil industry, to impress me, the refiners would tell me that cutting volatility would add umpty $million to production costs, and boosting octane quality would involve capital expenditure of umpty$millions and more $$millions for feedstocks. People like to throw big numbers around.
I used to divide their BIG numbers up among the people affected. Invariably the big numbers would fizzle out to quite small numbers against which the benefits could be compared as seen from the point of view of actual people trying to live their lives.
$50 trillion is a big number. Impressively large. But it shrinks to not such a big deal when scrutinized up close and personal.
What is going on is that the controllers of the US$ have been making obscene profits from their control and dilution of the US$ which was concealed by 2 billion Chinese and Indians coming on stream economically globalized at vastly lower pay than Americans and Europeans were accustomed to. Also by the stupendously amazing biotelecosmictechdot.com revolution which makes all previous developments trivial, possibly including the invention of DNA a couple of billion years ago. The industrial revolution was nothing by comparison [a replacement of our muscles while this is a replacement of our brains].
The current mess is just rebalancing of global portfolios, cash flows, employment, production, and correcting of presumptuous ideas about who was wealthy and who wasn't and how much debt was a good idea and how robust counter-parties were. It's a big deal for those concerned, but no great worry for the people planting rice in outback China or milking cows in hinterland NZ, or producing photovoltaic panels and CDMA ASICs hither and yon.
This is just part of capital spreading from those who thought they had it [but in fact didn't] to those who are competing for their share of the money river. I like to buy Made in China at low cost and good quality than Made in USA by people expecting $50,000 a year to assemble some widget. That has an impact on the lifestyles of those who previously got the job - bad luck, they have to get jobs more suited to their talents and adjust their income expectations [and mortgage payments].
In fact, $50 trillion of wealth hasn't vanished. Writing on a piece of paper that something is now worth half what it was doesn't mean any wealth has gone away. It wasn't there in the first place when the assets were incorrectly valued at some wishful thinking price.
When gold drops from $1000 an ounce to $500, it doesn't mean any wealth has vanished. It simply means the nominal value has changed. It is still worth exactly one ounce of gold. The owner can't swap the gold for as many Happy Meals as they could have done, but that doesn't mean wealth has vanished.
If people invent derivatives worth mega$billions, and they all go poof and become worthless, that doesn't mean any wealth vanished. If QCOM shareholders convince each other that QCOM is worth $100 a share, and somebody buys one of them at $100, that doesn't mean all QCOM shares are worth $100. If everyone gets a fright and they agree that it is really only $20 a share, and somebody sells one share at that price, that doesn't mean all the wealth has gone down to a fifth of what it was. QCOM still produces the same ASICs and software.
The oil marketers would talk in tons [of lubricants], preferably thousands of tons. They liked to be impressive and deal in big stuff. I would explain that people buy litres of lubricant, not tons and we should use the correct units when discussing what people do out in their car-driving lives.
People like big budgets. Big capital works. Thinking BIG. Big government. $millions were once impressive. Then anyone worth their salt dealt in $billions. The bidding starts at $1trillion now. Rupert has got the bidding up to $50 trillion.
What comes after trillion? 6 billion people at $1 million each is $6,000,000,000,000,000 which is six thousand trillion dollars. That's $6 quadrillion. I claim to be the first to get into the $quadrillions in the bidding in the financial crisis. People talking in $trillions are so last year.
Rupert's imagined $50 trillion wealth loss is nothing compared with $6 quadrillion of actual, real, human value which is sitting there right now.
Let's not get too excited by trivia.
Google soon found the sequence:
<million = 10<sup>6</sup>
billion = 10<sup>9</sup>
trillion = 10<sup>12</sup>
quadrillion = 10<sup>15</sup>
quintillion = 10<sup>18</sup>
hexillion = 10<sup>21</sup>
heptillion = 10<sup>24</sup>
octillion = 10<sup>27</sup>
nonillion = 10<sup>30</sup>
decillion = 10<sup>33</sup>
unodecillion = 10<sup>36</sup>
duodecillion = 10<sup>39</sup>
etc. >
Mqurice |
