More isn't just more, its different. Our culture is entering the realm of the Tera Dollar. That is $100 trillion dollars in debt. It is estimated that JPmorgan at one point had $100 trillion in notional derivatives outstanding at one point. Please note (notional) don't panic just yet.
The US debt, (our debt) for most of you reading this just passed $10 trillion dollars. I decided to see how fast we were clocking things up. Change seems so fashionable, so lets talk about the rate of change. Using data from the Treasury we can see how things are going. As of Oct 31. 2008 the debt was $10,574,094,462,968.2...Boo.
I took the debt starting from 2006 and calculated its growth rate to Oct 31, 2008. We arrive at a date for the US debt to reach Tera Dollar status $100,000,000,000.00 on Sept 16, 2025. This excludes unfunded liabilities and a whole host of other serious issues. This is more entertainment than economics. Is it me, or is it starting to smell like Zimbabwe around here? Data here:Download teradollarsahead.xls
To understand what this money means take a look at an interesting artist Chris Jordan who does fantastic visualizations of large numbers. Bigger isn't just bigger it is different. The photo below is actually a composite of 125,000 $100 bills $12.5m.
I guess now I understand why people are long dollars, they grow like crazy or at least the IOU flavor.
Here is the federal code showing the amendments to the US debt ceiling, for those of you who like to see the sausage being made. Walter wriston of Citibank realized that information and money were really the same thing. We are entering the age of tera on many levels.
