Friday, Feb 20, 2009
Out Of Control?
Telegraph: UK national debt set to surpass £2 trillion
The ONS expects to have to add between £1 trillion and £1.5 trillion to the UK's public sector net debt, taking the total national debt to an unprecedented £2.2 trillion – just under 150pc of gross domestic product. This would be the worst debt total since the 1950s, when Britain was in the process of paying back its war debts.
The figures were the latest in a blizzard of bad news on the public finances, which have been badly hit by the financial and economic crisis.
The ONS confirmed its decision to add the debts of Lloyds and RBS to the public balance sheet, but warned that their complexity meant it was still working out exactly how much this would impact the national debt.
Posted by troy @ 10:52 AM (1006 views) Add Comment
17 Comments
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1. troy said...
2 thousand is 2,000
is 2 thousand
= 2 x 103
2 million is 2,000,000
is 2 thousand thousands = 2 x 103 x 103
= 2 x 106
2 billion is 2,000,000,000
is 2 thousand, thousand, thousands = 2 x 103 x 103 x 103
= 2 x 109
or
is 2 million thousands
= 2 x 106 x 103
= is 2 x 109
2 trillion is 2,000,000,000,000
is 2 thousand thousand thousand thousand
= 2 x 103 x 103 x 103 x 103
= 2 x 1012
or
is 2 billion thousands
= 2 x 109 x 103
= 2 x 1012
or
is 2 million, millions
is 2 x 106 x 106
= 2 x 1012
2. troy said...
2 trillion ! buzzword for today?
World Bank chief economist proposes 2 trillion dollar Global Recovery Fund
www.chinaview.cn 2009-02-10 04:10:32 Print
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- World Bank Chief Economist Justin Lin on Monday called for the establishment of a 2-trillion-dollar Global Recovery Fund to help the low-income countries to cope with the current financial crisis.
The proposed massive fund, which Lin said was in "the spirit of Marshall Plan for the development," would help the low-income economies to invest in the bottleneck areas and achieve sustained growth.
3. troy said...
EU takes a €2 trillion financial gamble• Governments in boldest banking rescue plan ever
• Coordinated action puts Washington in the shade
Ian Traynor in Brussels and Angelique Chrisafis in Paris The Guardian, Tuesday 14 October 2008 The governments of Europe yesterday embarked on their biggest financial gamble since the launch of the euro single currency with the boldest financial rescue scheme ever seen. They are pledging to buy up tottering banks, underwrite their lending, and flood the markets with liquidity in a package that could run to a staggering €2tn in total across the EU.
4. troy said...
2 Trillion Lacing Methods?
On an average shoe with six pairs of eyelets, there are almost 2 Trillion ways to feed a shoelace though those 12 eyelets! Impossible? This page shows the maths behind that extraordinary number.
Shoe Lacing Mathematics
It hardly seems possible that there could be quite that many ways to feed a lace through 12 eyelets! So let's look at the mathematics:
Feed through one of 12 eyelets from either inside or outside. That's 24 possible ways to start.
Continue through one of 11 remaining eyelets from either inside or outside (x 22 more ways).
Then 10 remaining eyelets (x 20 more ways). We've only gone through three eyelets and we're already up to 24 x 22 x 20 = 10,560 ways!
By the time we reach the last eyelet (x 2 more ways), the possible ways have multiplied to 24 x 22 x 20 x 18 x 16 x 14 x 12 x 10 x 8 x 6 x 4 x 2 ways, a staggering total of 1,961,990,553,600.
That's almost 2 TRILLION possibilities!
sorry if this seems a bit off topic, just trying to get my head around 2 trillion again, I'm sure I kneww last week but things change so quickly.
5. greytornado said...
I'm not a rocket scientist, but it seems to me that UK plc is probably bankrupt?
6. Breck said...
Troy...
Just get some comfy slip-ons and get on with your life man.
7. mountain goat said...
Troy @1 - I was confused by what you wrote, but now I see. 2000 = 2x10exp3
Anyway news to make Gordon-"Sold the Gold" -Brown hang his head in shame, only a matter of time till we lose out AAA rating.
8. stillthinking said...
troy, perhaps you need to divide by 2 because shoelaces don't have individual ends and so you have to consider each end point as also being the start point.
9. troy said...
stillthinking you may be right, good to see someones still got a sense of humour, methinks we're going to need one.
I should ave included the link to the article.
That's almost 2 TRILLION possibilities!
This number can be halved for those paths that are mirror images of other paths, and halved again for those that follow the identical path from opposite directions. That still results in almost 500 billion ways.
Then again, we can multiply by the many different ways the laces can be crossed or interwoven prior to passing through those eyelets, and multiply again if we allow the laces to either pass through any eyelet more than once or skip any eyelet, and even more if we use two or more laces per shoe. This results in almost infinite possibilities, limited mainly by the length of the shoelaces.
In the real world however, we can place some sensible constraints, such as:
http://www.shoe-lacing.com/shoelace/2trillionmethods.htm
10. troy said...
stillthinking ~~~ just a passing thought, if shoe laces can be that complicated, no wonder the bankers and politicians have us all stitched up.
11. Chilli said...
I think to draw this shoe lacing analogy out a bit in accordance with money supply - we should calculate based on a elastic shoe lace. Except we don't know how elastic...!!!??
Perhaps, if we take guesses on how elastic it is two weeks prior to the event of lacing up the shoe and then have our guess offset by an uncontrollable variable at the time of lacing, such as the size of the shoe, we would be even closer.
Or we could realise we haven't got a clue and just give up. Perhaps the bankers should give up too.
12. alan said...
Are there any good books on what to do when we go bankrupt? Serious question. I think I'll order from Amazon while the Royal Mail still works.
Failing that, anyone know a good website?
13. This comment has been removed as it was found to be in breach of our Blog Policies.
14. 51ck-6-51x said...
alan -
Countries do not go bankrupt since it is a legally defined status rather than an actual event.
Countries can, however, default on their debt - a sovereign default (or attempt to renegotiate the terms of their debt as any other debtor may, a 'technical default'). Here is a paper discussing the costs of sovereign default.
15. 51ck-6-51x said...
troy - Mmmm big numbers...
A Rubik's cube that has not been broken may be in any of ~ 4.3 * 10^19 states*
That is over 10 million trillion.
The number of atoms in a typical human is of the order of 10^27 (apparently) as are the number of possible initial deals to a 9 seated Texas Hold 'Em game (52 cards, 2 cards each).
That is one thousand trillion trillion.
There are around 8 * 10^67 ways to order a pack of 52 cards (52!)
That is more than 10 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.
The number of particles in the universe has been guessed at around 10^80 - 10^85... but are there even such things as particles.
That is 10 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.
The number of cattle in the smallest herd to solve Archimedes' Cattle Problem is ~7.8 * 10^206,544
I'm not even going to bother writing "trillion" 17,212 times.
Graham's number**, G, is probably (it was found in 1977) the biggest number ever needed so far by the human race, but maybe that will soon not be the case?!
The number is supposedly too big to be able to represent in power notation even if one used all the material in the universe as ink.
* Rubiks states:
One can think of putting the cube together in a way that maintains it's legality:
There are 8 corners, the last of which cannot choose it's orientation (8! * 3^8 / 3 = 8! * 3^7);
There are 12 edges, the last two cannot choose their positions, the last one cannot choose it's orientation (12! * 2^12 / 2 / 2 = 12! * 2^10);
=> no of states = 12! * 8! * 3^7 * 2^10 = 43,252,003,274,489,856,000)
** Graham's Number:
Define ^ as the power operator, as in the rest of this post
now define an operator consisting of multiple ^s in a row such that:
a^^a = a^a^a
a^^^a = a^^a^^a
a^^^^a = a^^^a^^^a
and so on.
Now let's start to try to comprehend it's size...
call 3^3^3^3^3...3 f(n) where n is the number of instances of the ^ operator
3^3 = f(1) = 27
3^^3 = 3^3^3 = f(2) = 7,625,597,484,987
3^^^3 = 3^^3^^3 = f(3^3^3)
3^^^^3 = 3^^^3^^^3 = f(3^^3^^3)
...
G = 3^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^3
So it's pretty incomprehensible.
Graham's number is an upper bound to a certain problem within the realm of Ramsay theory, whose lower bound is 6.
The funny thing is that experts in the field suspect the actual answer to Graham's problem is 6.
16. 51ck-6-51x said...
alan -
If you really want to read some detail though how about Roubini's famous "Bail Out's or Bail in's?" which may be found in 10 parts (9 chapters & an appendix) at the Peterson Institute's website - but google's search is better at finding the files than theirs:
Google Search
17. mountain goat said...
Alan @11 - have a look at this http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article8801.html