700 B-I-L-L-I-O-N Dollars

October 21, 2008 by Nepharia · Leave a Comment 

Technophiles on the Loose

It sounds like the punch line from an Austin Power’s movie.

Do we really even know how much that is? I lifted the following from Snopes.com to help you put ONE BILLION into perspective:


  • A billion seconds is about 31.7 years


  • A billion minutes is approximately 1901 years.


  • A billion hours represents a bit over 114,000 years.


  • A billion days ago is about 2.74 million years.


  • A billion dollars ago: If the U.S. federal government were spending a billion dollars every 8 hours and 20 minutes, its total yearly expenditure would be a little more than $1 trillion. In the last few years, the budgets approved by Congress have been about double that amount, or $2 trillion per year.

So how much does the federal government get to spend every year? Approximately $2.4 trillion, give or take a billion.

You may be thinking that we seem to have enough for the $700 Billion bailout. However, consider this: before the bailout, the government expected to spend $2.8 trillion dollars, which is $400 billion more than it had to spend to begin with.

And just where does it get that money to overspend? That same place your or I would get it: they borrow it. This year, they will have to borrow over $1 trillion (existing $400 billion deficit, plus the $700 billion just added with this new bailout bill).

Please bear in mind that as of last year, our government had to allot 10% of their income just to cover interest on the existing deficit — this money is owed to real entities in the world.

Does this sound like a responsible government to you?

Interesting Reading

Filed under: General Rant
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Slashdot

October 4, 2008 by Nepharia · Leave a Comment 

Geek Haven

slashdot logo

Slashdot or “/.” as it’s also written, is actually very hard to describe. It’s news from all over that readers think is important and then submit to Slashdot to be shared with the world. Got it?

They have essentially harnessed the power of all their readers to comb the internet and submit geek news to them. As a result, they get a lot of interesting — albeit eclectic — set of information. But very informative. Check it out.

Filed under: Technology
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