I am reprinting a post that I wrote on June 9, 2015. In these pandemic times, the financial solutions that our Government is considering and offering, make this post a tad bit timely.

I am a self-proclaimed political geek. I enjoy the political machine and personalities that make it run.  I work at home and I have the MN Legislature cable channel on in the background during session.

I’ve come to realize they speak in dollar amounts I can’t truly comprehend.  I just needed to look up what’s after billions. That’s the denomination that came into a debate. There are 9 zeros in a billion and then it jumps to 12 zeros in a Trillion. Yikes.

I remember when a Million dollars seemed incomprehensible.  That was only 6 zeros but it looked like a lot on the checks that Michael Anthony delivered on The Millionaire in the 1950’s TV series. I thought that the next denomination after a Million was Heaven.

It would change people’s lives in both good and bad ways on the series. In an hour we were shown the proper behavior for when we accepted our check and the pitfalls of bad judgement. Building an orphanage or convent was good.  Spending a day at the track…not so much. The only stipulation for accepting the money was that the recipient could not tell anyone where they got it. Oh yeah, that would go over great today! “I found coins buried under a tree” will only work so often.

Those 6 zeros would still change my life and the lives of almost everyone I know. We could wipe our debt slate clean with money to spare. Unfortunately, Michael Anthony isn’t making house calls any more, but there is still the Publisher’s Clearing House.

Back to the numbers that government throws about. To be honest, I cannot take these numbers seriously. They sound like play money. Heck there was only $15,140 in the total bank of Monopoly. That wouldn’t pay for infrastructure repairs to Reading Railroad by today’s standards. You’d need to add 6 zeros and you will need to make 72 million trips pass GO.

Is there a billion dollar bill or do you just pay with 10 million bills? There probably aren’t that many billion bills needed since they won’t get passed around a lot. Fewer yet will go through the laundry. And whose picture is on it?  My candidate is Robin Williams. Every time someone looked at the bill they would imagine his thoughts about that denomination.

I suppose I would get a lot of answers if I researched the US Treasury Department. I can now only imagine how large the facilities must be to store the billions worth of gold that are pouring in to cover the new debt. I have never understood why we give gold the value we do. I understand oil and our dependency on it. But gold? I think it’s pretty but I’d rather have soup bullion if I was stranded on a desert island. The survival values outweigh something shiny.

I have come to accept that although the numbers are probably imaginary, the needs are real. Somehow, somewhere something will be done. It just takes more imagination.

By the way, look for the term Quadrillion in next year’s Legislative session. (That’s 15 zeros).