Insert Doctor Evil laugh here.
My, that is a lot of zeros. Its hard to really put that into perspective. Here is something to help, though the largest pile of money they show is only about half of what Wall Street wants. Follow me over the fold while I talk about what really concerns me about that number.
Aside from the shear audacity of asking for money after screwing us over for years, selling the greater part of US value overseas and claiming that deregulation isn't at fault, I think we have a bigger problem here. $700,000,000,000 is really hard to understand. They don't even write it out in the news. In part because it takes up so much space, but in part because we really can't comprehend just how big that number is, or how much value should be assigned to that. And that is the problem.
We devalue the significance or this because we can't comprehend the number or place it in context in our lives. A reminder won't help, and a comparison won't help. How many houses can you own with $700,000,000,000 when you can only live in one at a time?
We have to abstract this out to the effect it has on our entire country, but that has nothing we can see directly. We can see the impact on the DOW, but that is just a bunch of numbers, and that is hard to understand or predict given how it has bounced up and down with every 'hafta' or 'nuh-uh' we see here or on the news. The closest we can come is to see the impact on individuals. Wall Street traders who look haunted, people who have been foreclosed on moving out of what was once their home. But it is still hard to draw a connection between this bill and the $700,000,000,000 and their day to day issues.
Have you noticed that I am intentionally using the full numerical value of $700,000,000,000? I am hoping that instead of getting used to it, you will see it and become aware of other places using '$700B' and realize they are skimping, almost cheating the truth. They don't want to show the full number because you might start thinking about just how big it is. And what it means.
So, what does it mean?
I can't answer that for you. But I am hoping that I can get you to think more cogently about just how much is at stake here. This isn't just about bailing out Wall Street, or shoring up the US economy. It is about changing our perspective on tha value of money, and really, the value of value.
So think really hard about what you value. And what is worth $700,000,000,000.