Me Blog!

My poor son. He’s only 2 years and 4 months old but in another 60 years he will still be paying for Fianna Fáil’s failed policy of throwing cash at problems in the hopes that a solution may present itself. No doubt by now you are all fed up of hearing about NAMA, “going forward ™” and all the other cliches being thrown around but have you ever for a moment tried to imagine just how much money is involved?

For example when you see it written or hear it being mentioned you might not think that there is much of a difference between a million or a billion. What I mean is that both words just slip off the tongue. We know that they are both large numbers especially if money is being referred to, but I think most people just don’t realise how large it actually is. For instance the media will alway say “11bn” or “11 billion” . If you happen to read a newspaper then you may read about someone being fined “€10,000″. If like me you look at the 10,000 written in numbers then it seems to be a large amount. So how about a million? We all know there are six zeros in a million. There are 9 zeros in a billion so written out numerically a million = 1,000,000 and a billion is 1,000,000,000.

11 billion = 11,000,000,000

All of a sudden it looks much more significant! So let’s apply it to what is going on in our unfair isle, all the below in euro:

196 – Amount a single person gets in unemployment benefit/assistance per week.
10,192 – The amount the above receives in a year
30,000 – The average industrial wage.
100,191 – The basic salary of a T.D.
213,183 – Average price of a house in Ireland December 2009
311,078 – Average price of a house in Ireland February 2007
11,000,000,000 – The amount paid out by the government to Anglo Irish, AIB and BoI to date.
77,000,000,000 – The book value of assets that will be taken over by NAMA.
397,557,000,000 – Net loan book value of Irish financial institutions covered under the guarantee scheme.

It looks quite a lot more forboding now doesn’t it? Just to give you another example, How long would it take a single person on the dole donating every cent that they get to repay some of the above?

3 years to earn the minimum wage
10 years to earn the same as a T.D.
21 years to buy a house
1,079,277 years to match the amount paid out to the big three already.
7,554,945 years to match NAMA’s assets book value.
39,006,770 years to match the net loan book value of the guaranteed financial institutions.

Yep, over 39 million years! Now if you are bored by the numbers how about what Anglo Irish Banks losses would look like in €100 notes? Head on over to thestory.ie to have your mind blown.