30 Billion!

STRS has lost $30 Billion recently. Gee, that sounds like a lot of money. Let's see how much that is in practical terms. A million sounds like a lot of money, too; a billion must be more, so let's ask: "How much more?" A million seconds is a long time, isn't it? Well, not as much as you would think. A million seconds is only about 11 days and 11 hours. OK, then, how long is a billion seconds? It's a lot longer; to be exact, a billion seconds is more than 31 years. It's hard to comprehend how much bigger a billion is compared to a million, so let's get some more examples. If the $30 billion dollars STRS has lost were 30 billion seconds, it would stretch from today until the year 2959 A.D., roughly 47 generations into the future. $30 billion is, in short, a lot of money. It is, in fact, incomprehensibly large. Since what STRS lost is money, let's talk about money. Let's see what 30 billion one dollar bills does for us. We shall lay them out, one by one, and see how much ground they cover. This is, of course, a mind-experiment since, as mentioned above, if we laid one bill every second it would take us 950 years to lay them all down. You can probably figure out you could cover your yard with them, and you'd be right. Ah, but would it cover your entire city? Yes, it will probably will. "Wait a minute," you exclaim, "how do you know that since you don't know what city I live in?" Well, actually, that's pretty easy to answer. Follow along with me here. Again, it's almost disappointing how little a million is. A million bucks would probably cover all your yard, with a bit left over; that's 2.55 acres but, if you had a large lot, you might have some bare spots. Ah, but a billion bucks goes much farther; it will cover 4 square miles. Now, that's a lovely sight…4 square miles covered with dollar bills. "Gotcha!" you exclaim. "My city is much bigger than 4 square miles." Yes, that's probably true, but STRS didn't lose a mere 1 billion dollars, it lost 30 billion dollars and that's almost exactly 120 square miles. Columbus, Ohio, is 210 square miles so, if you live in Columbus, it'd only cover a little more than half. The next largest city in land area is Cleveland, a diminutive 76 square miles, and you'd have enough dollar bills to cover almost all of it two bills deep. The next time you drive over the innerbelt bridge, take a look around and visualize everything you see covered in dollar bills, two deep. That, my friend, is a lot of cash. If area isn't your cup of tea, let's talk about solid stuff. I bet you think 30 billion nickels is pretty heavy. You'd be right. A million nickels weighs about as much three cars. Big piles, but easily visualized. However, 30 billion nickels would form a pile the size of three Titanic-sized ocean liners (the Titanic only displaced a mere 46,328 gross tons, a measly 8.4 billion nickels). Keep in mind 30 billion nickels is only worth 1½ billion dollars. In terms of pennies, 30 billion dollars worth of pennies would form a pile the size of twenty Titanics bunched together. If the earth and the sun were 30 billion times closer, the sun would be hovering 1,500 feet in the air above our heads. That would certainly make solar panels more efficient, assuming we wouldn't be bothered by the 5,000 degree temperature (we would be), or not sucked by gravity onto its surface (we would be). If you were a light ray, traveling at 186,282 miles per second (note: miles per SECOND; that's 670,616,700 mph), it would take you almost two days (44.44 hours) to go 30 billion miles. Well, you catch my drift. STRS has lost a lot of money, an inconceivably large amount. I do not appreciate that amount being trivialized by individuals acting as cheerleaders for the investment department. Yes, many other institutions have lost funds in the recent market downturn; other cars skidding off the road neither excuses my poor driving technique, nor my ignoring hazardous road conditions. There seem to be no consequences whatsoever, to anybody, for this $30 billion loss of assets, and that, in light of the gargantuan losses we have suffered, is very disturbing. Like the old saying goes, "If you continue to do things the same way, why would you expect different results?"
Richard A. DeColibus
1/4/09