Mommy what's a Quadrillion Dollars?

07-13-2009 • korpisworld.blogspot.com

It looks like one can make an honest living out of frivolous lawsuits.

Last Wednesday, an article was published revealing that our Federal government was hit with 489,000 lawsuits stemming from the 2005 Katrina disaster totaling $3,014,170,389,176,41. That's 3 + QUADRILLION dollars. Being a math teacher, I occasionally come across very large numbers (not when counting my paycheck), but even I had forgotten what comes after a billion. Because of this beyond-astronomical number, I will not likely soon forget that it is quadrillion.

After my initial shock at such an unfathomably huge dollar amount that was, I did the math to find the AVERAGE amount of each lawsuit, hoping this would bring the number into the realm of reasonableness--it didn't. With 489,000 claims, that comes out to a staggering 6,163,947,626 per person. THAT'S 6.1 BILLION DOLLARS EACH FOR ALMOST HALF A MILLION PEOPLE!!!!! That's equivalent to EVERYONE in Atlanta, Georgia