$1.29 trillion -that's what I call a budget deficit!‏

Reuters reports that at $1.29 trillion, the United States ran up its second-highest budget deficit since World War Two in the fiscal year that ended September 30. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69658Y20101007 An interesting analogy from mathematician John Allen Paulos (Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences) makes tangible the scale of the ‘superpower’s’ debt – ‘it takes 11½ days for 1 million seconds to pass but 32 years for 1 billion seconds to pass. And it takes 32,000 years for 1 trillion seconds to pass…..’