Looking for one Year's Worth of World Gross Domestic Product
by Library Karen
The news headline read “Global Financial Assets Lost $50 Trillion Last Year.”
Lost? Lost?
My mind keeps running over the word, trying to conceptualize “losing” $50 trillion dollars. I try to relate this “loss” to losses that I have experienced personally. I find no point of reference.
Once I lost a pair of hiking boots. They were beautiful; wine and burgundy leather. An old boyfriend gave them to me. I loved those boots. But one day I went looking for them and just couldn’t find them. Have never seen them since. Gone for all time. Perhaps left behind on a camping trip. They were lost.
Another time, while moving, I lost my bathroom scales. That one might not have been so much a “losing” as an accidental drowning. Although, they could still be under the drivers seat in the 1967 Chevy that served as my moving van that year. It is also “lost”, in the sense that I no longer own it but wish I did. Last I heard a guy who trains horses was using it on a track to pace fillies.
On a more related vein, last year my co-worker “lost” $100.00 that was intended as a shower gift. It eventually turned up, in an interdepartmental envelope at a department for which it was not intended. So, in that case it was merely misdirected. Not actually lost, but we never did get it back…
Of course there are the many, many things I've lost that can never be recovered. Youth, virginity, all the money my T-4 says I earned last year, my waistline, and at least a few of my marbles. Generally I don’t feel so bad about losing those things as I did have a bit of fun in the process.
But losing 50 trillion dollars? I’m sorry but trying to imagine that is akin to trying to visualize “losing” the entirety of the universe. Or even just a galaxy. Can you imagine a headline that reads “50 Trillion Stars in Milky Way Lost.” Seems like a tough thing to misplace.
Lost? Lost? Apparently that is equivalent to losing one year's worth of world gross domestic product.
No, I really don’t think that is possible.
So, in order to be able to sleep tonight I think I will re-frame that $50 trillion not as “lost” but merely placed into some ginormous interdepartmental envelope which has somehow been misdirected to...well, let me know if you have any bright ideas (please don't say AIG.)
Let’s hope we get this one back...
by Library Karen
The news headline read “Global Financial Assets Lost $50 Trillion Last Year.”
Lost? Lost?
My mind keeps running over the word, trying to conceptualize “losing” $50 trillion dollars. I try to relate this “loss” to losses that I have experienced personally. I find no point of reference.
Once I lost a pair of hiking boots. They were beautiful; wine and burgundy leather. An old boyfriend gave them to me. I loved those boots. But one day I went looking for them and just couldn’t find them. Have never seen them since. Gone for all time. Perhaps left behind on a camping trip. They were lost.
Another time, while moving, I lost my bathroom scales. That one might not have been so much a “losing” as an accidental drowning. Although, they could still be under the drivers seat in the 1967 Chevy that served as my moving van that year. It is also “lost”, in the sense that I no longer own it but wish I did. Last I heard a guy who trains horses was using it on a track to pace fillies.
On a more related vein, last year my co-worker “lost” $100.00 that was intended as a shower gift. It eventually turned up, in an interdepartmental envelope at a department for which it was not intended. So, in that case it was merely misdirected. Not actually lost, but we never did get it back…
Of course there are the many, many things I've lost that can never be recovered. Youth, virginity, all the money my T-4 says I earned last year, my waistline, and at least a few of my marbles. Generally I don’t feel so bad about losing those things as I did have a bit of fun in the process.
But losing 50 trillion dollars? I’m sorry but trying to imagine that is akin to trying to visualize “losing” the entirety of the universe. Or even just a galaxy. Can you imagine a headline that reads “50 Trillion Stars in Milky Way Lost.” Seems like a tough thing to misplace.
Lost? Lost? Apparently that is equivalent to losing one year's worth of world gross domestic product.
No, I really don’t think that is possible.
So, in order to be able to sleep tonight I think I will re-frame that $50 trillion not as “lost” but merely placed into some ginormous interdepartmental envelope which has somehow been misdirected to...well, let me know if you have any bright ideas (please don't say AIG.)
Let’s hope we get this one back...
