How Much Is A Quadrillion?

I have been wondering in recent days if there is any place, any bank, any fund, any bond, any object that I can put my cash into that can be considered safe and could bring me a return. Last week the BoE base rate fell to 0.5% and, of course, bank savings interest rates fell 0.5%. This means that many so called savings accounts give interest rates of zero - zilch - nothing at all; it is even suggested that some of these wonderful institutions - banks - may even start asking for money to pay them to look after our money. That should cause a run on the banks like none they have ever imagined. Even now letting banks look after our money is like letting an alcoholic take charge of a brewery.

Today the BoE started Phase One of its wondrous scheme of Quantitative Easing and we could hear the printing presses rumbling into action as they start to churn out £2 billion worth of extra fivers. Only yesterday, I read an American commentator writing about debts associated with CDOs. I don't really understand CDOs - Collateralized Debt Obligations - which, apparently, are toxic bundles of asset backed securities [ABS] with different levels of risk. The trouble is that no one else seems to understand them either. But bundles of these things are floating about like concentrated doses of bubonic plague waiting to infect some apparently healthy financial institution. Now the American commentator was of the opinion that the total value of these dollops of trouble was $0.75 quadrillion. Now, as a man who has had trouble visualizing just what a $1 trillion amounts to I am in even deeper water with a quadrillion. What is a quadrillion? Let us assume that it is merely 1,000 trillion. Using a business model that I have used before. If I had this 0.75 quadrillion and started to spend it at the rate of $1,000,000 per day, for how long would my $0.75 quadrillion last The answer is just over 2,000,000 years. We have been in fantasy land for some time with the financial system, now, surely, we are over the edge. Only Mr Mugabe with his endless supply of Zimbabwean dollars can get to grips with this one. In reality, it is impossible to have so much rubbish debt. The silly number has been produced because the same toxic rubbish goes round and round the merry-go-round until .... Until what? Fundamentally, the system is bust. But we knew that.