A million is a big number right?....

....well maybe not.

I've been struggling to imagine what some of the new 'big numbers' in the news look like, e.g. £62billion lent to the banks in bailouts. I used to think a million was a lot of cash, but here's an interesting model to think about.

If you imagine that 1 second in time = £1, have a think about this:

o 1 million seconds happened about 1.5 weeks ago.....not that long ago really
o 1 billion seconds happened some time in 1978.....that seems quite long ago
o However, 1 trillion seconds happened around 29,000BC .....goodness.

The difference between a billion and a trillion is absolutely staggering. But..hold on, we're told the country is absolutely skint, and yet I know that the total amount of personal wealth invested in pension plans alone (not taking into account any other savings or investments of any sort) is £1.5trillion. All of a sudden, the deficit amounts start to sound rather less scary.

Which, and apologies for the winding route to get to my point, makes me think that someone, somewhere, must be stoking the flames and doing rather well out of all this panicking about recession, otherwise what's all the fuss about? If only I could work out how they are scamming the system to exploit the weak (the countries with no wealth), then I'd have a scoop.......

.....and maybe I shouldn't have tried those mushrooms I found in the woods today.