The numbers game Summary By Yusuf Ismail

Yusuf Ismail

Alyssa Francis

English 109.01

October 4, 2010

The Chapter “ the Numbers Game” appears in the book I’m a Stranger here myself” by Bill Bryson .The author provides how the U.S. economy is going downhill every second and the debt is increasing more and more. The congress will never cease giving a hand, recently voted to give the pentagon $11 billion more than it had asked for. $11 billion is a lot it. California has an economy worth $850 billion. The annual gross domestic product of the United States is $6.8 trillion. The federal budget is $1.6 trillion, the federal deficit nearly $200 billion. The America’s cumulative debt at last account, according to Time magazine, was slightly under $4.7 trillion. Well let’s try to grasp the concept of $1trillion. Imagine that you were in a vault filled with dollar bills and that you were told you could keep each one initialed. Let’s say you initialed one dollar bill per second and that you worked straight through without ever stopping. How long do you think it would take to count a trillion? It takes twelve weeks, two years and five.

If you initialed one dollar bill per second, you would make $1,000 every seventeen minutes. After 12 days of nonstop effort you would acquire your first $1 million. It would take you 120 days to accumulate $10 million and 1, 00 days something over three years to reach $100 million. After 31.7 years you might be as wealthy as bill gates. So imagine how long will it take you to calculate a “Trillions”, the U.S. are in a BIG debt.