Money makes the world go round … or something like that.

Every day on the way home from work I listen to the News Radio in my car.  I hear news on all sorts of things from around the world, but one thing that stood out to me this week was the financial section.  It was talking about how much the United States is in debt.  It got me thinking (of course it did… that’s what I do) about money and numbers. 

The concept of money is a man made thing.  It was all started by the banks which were the store houses for people’s gold.  In order to make it easier for people to spend their gold, the banks came up with the idea of issuing notes, stating a certain value in gold.  If a person wanted to use some of their gold, he or she would go to the bank, ask for a specific amount and then they would be given a ticket with a value on it.  If they wanted to physically take their gold out of the bank, they could take these tickets or bills to the bank and hand them over in return for physical gold. 

Sound familiar?  To me, it sounds a lot like how we put our money into the bank and then we spend it electronically using a debit card.  It is essentially the same idea, only now we are able to spend money that does not even exist.  This means that money is being virtually created but does not really exist at all.  The only reason the American government is in such great debt is because they have given virtual money to their constituents, via credit cards and lines of credit.  People liked the idea of having all of this money at their disposal and not having to earn it, or pay it back immediately.  The people then went spend crazy and started spending virtual money that they would never be able to repay.  How could the government be so stupid?  I always figured you had have at least a grade three education to be a politician, but maybe things are different in America.  Who knows?

The next place my mind went was the different currencies in the world.  First I thought of Japan and their Yen.  As of today, each US dollar is worth roughly 76 Yen.  As of January 23, 2011, the country with the lowest exchange rate compared with the US Dollar is Somalia, coming in at a conversion of 1 US Dollar for every 33,300 Somali Shillings!  If we were to take only the domestic debt of the United States ($14.34 trillion) and convert it from American Dollars to Somali Shillings we would get a number like this: 23,474,580,000,000,000.00 I am pretty sure that the word “kajillion” would come into play here.  Is that even a word?  Who knows?  That is the point.  There is so much money in the world that we have to make up new words just to accurately portray such a large number.

I googled it!  Kajillion is a word, and it is in reference to “fictitious, infinite numbers.”  Moreover, $23,340,580,000,000,000.00 is called “Twenty three quadrillion, three hundred forty trillion, five hundred eighty billion dollars.” ... just in case you were wondering.  I found a chart that gives the proper names for all of the proceeding numbers after quadrillion.  Click HERE to see it.  You know your nerdy side wants to!

The next place my mind went was here:  How many people in the world are starving?  How many people in the world do not have access to health care or clean water?  How many people in the world do not have a home or a bed?  More importantly, if there is SO much money in the world, why is it that there are so many people who are going without the basic necessities of life?

Now, we all know that the government is crazy, maybe even corrupt, (please hold your comments until the end) and each country of our wonderful world has its own government that likes to be “crazy and corrupt” in its own specific way.  Therefore, there is pretty much no possible way for me alone to make a world wide change in the way the governments deal with their debt, their resources and the basic needs of their people.  That being said, there is a way that we can help.  In fact, there are many ways.  We will likely not be able to get all of the powers that be to see the world with one mind, but we can sure do something about helping our fellow human beings and meeting their physical needs.

There will be more to come on this topic later.  

Thanks for "listening."