A million seconds is 11 1/2 days. A billion seconds is around 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,000 years. I'm used to billions, at least I can get my head around the numbers thrown around in business and governance. Trillions don't come up often. There are only 11 countries in the world with annual GDP greater than $1 trillion. The entire world economy is about US$54 trillion. The US is variously estimated to have spent about $5 trillion in current dollars to fight WW 2.
All of a sudden, the US financial crisis, is throwing out numbers in the trillions. This frightens me. I hope it frightens the powers that be. Its an enormous red flag. The kind of debt levels facing US taxpayers are unprecedented in the modern world. A lot of people are working very hard to ensure worst case scenarios are avoided. But even so, there's a frightening amount of debt on the table.
Both the SEC and British regulators are banning short selling of stocks. This is an extraordinary intervention in the markets. It scares me as much as the bad debt. Short sellers are like pathogens that help to regulate the overall health of the markets. A need to stop short sellers, even temporarily, suggests the markets may be broken in fundamental ways. If so, we are in scary new waters.
If you'll permit a catastrophic analogy, its a bit like the Titanic, another T word. Having spotted the iceberg, the rudder isn't turning the ship fast enough, and we've just been informed the steel may be sub-standard, brittle and prone to crack.
