Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Some context.

I took a few economics classes in college but I am no economist. I do, however, especially for a copywriter have quite a facility with numbers. So, let me pick a number out of the air.

$700,000,000,000. Seven-hundred-billion dollars.

My calculus says that's about $2300 for every man, woman, child and parakeet in the US.

So, a family of four is contributing $9,200 to the Fed's bailout. In addition to the $8000 they are already contributing to the Invasion Department (formerly known as the Defense Department.)

Now, one or two other numbers: Carly Fiorina (an ex-client of mine and McPalin advisor) reduced the market value of H-P by 50% and cut over 20,000 jobs. She walked away from her H-P failure with over $40,000,000. Stanley O'Neal set up the pre-conditions for the demise of Merrill-Lynch. He parachuted home with approximately $120,000,000.

Now a bit more context. If the period at the end of the previous sentence represents one dollar, the dot representing $700,000,000,000 would be the size of Karl Rove's head including all his chins.

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