I remember the time in Ireland when the number of millionaires we had in the whole country could be counted on the fingers of one hand and the thumb left over. If you met or even saw a millionaire you did so with a sharp intake of awed breath. We did not even know that billionaires existed, except we'd heard that the Rockefellers were millionaires many times over.
Nowadays we can read in the Sunday papers the list of the wills of those who died recently, and it is clear that anybody who had a big house and any couple of bob in the bank at all was a millionaire. Their professions range from window cleaners to shopkeepers and teachers and farmers. Whatever about the deepening recession, it is clear that we have been living among a whole colony of millionaires and billionaires for the past 20 years or thereabouts. That's quite amazing, given our history of hardship and woe.
With the times that are in it this March, and the global crash uniting us all as our economies shudder and crack and stubbornly refuse to recover despite being given powerful steroidal-type shots of taxpayers' cash, I believe that I have stumbled across an even larger and more complex problem that is rapidly coming our way. We are running out of language to describe both the Everest of the bank debts and the power of the cash injections with which central banks are trying to manage them.
Both in England and in the U.S., both business and political leaders are now smoothly enough getting their tongues around the word trillion. They have been talking in billions for the better part of a year now on both sides of the Atlantic (even our taoiseach is talking billions of bailout money for the economy), and now the major leaders are talking in trillions. And can I please write down just one of those trillions in numeric format for you: It is 1,000,000,000, 000.
Does that not blow the mind? I don't think I can even break it down verbally the way you used to be able to do with, say, "seven hundred and fifty million euros." Do you know what I mean, or am I the only one in trouble on this front? The figures of the debts have gone so huge we cannot even pronounce them anymore. Maybe it is better that the most of us cannot. That one trillion written down numerically above is a hell of a lot more frightening than the single word "trillion."
There are an awful lot of millions buried in the red in there. It reminds me of a bicycle repairman I knew in Boyle in Roscommon many years ago. His little workshop was across the street from the Munster & Leinster Bank that had a huge, proud golden legend emblazoned across the window: "£55,000,000 in Assets!"
My friend would gesture across the street from his workshop at that sign and he'd always say, "Y'see those last six numbers - they're all mine!" With the way we are digging out our banks with taxpayers' money nowadays, we are all in the same position. But the fundamental problem I mentioned earlier is indeed an extremely difficult one altogether. You see, if throwing the trillions into the pot does not steady the markets and stop the roiling and moiling of the economies globally, then our leaders are in real trouble altogether. Because there is no precise language at all to accurately describe the next level of cash injections.
"Zillions!" you say, and I thought that myself until I checked the matter out. And it seems that the numeric reality is that zillions don't really exist as a scale of measurement. They are really imaginative yokes, just like gadzillions. When my daughter Ciara was five and sitting on my knee begging for a chocolate biscuit she would promise me "a million zillion fondies" (kisses) in return. (When she got the biscuit that usually amounted to a maximum of four sticky ones!)
And it is only in such childhood fairylands that zillions have any currency at all, if ye know what I mean. So we had better hope that the trillions do the trick or the world will run out of not just cash, but the language to accurately describe its dire plight. Think about it. In the meantime, I'll start off a numeric template for a zillion dollars, and you can add on the rest of the noughts yourself - as many as you like:
"1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,.............................."