Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
So, on your estimates of the 'financial' and 'non-financials' back then were: $450 billion 'spent' by governments collectively and $40 billion in 'non-financial costs'.
What does 40,000 lives saved (to go the extremes of the estimate) times $5 million add up to? Maybe we're mixing US billions with Australian billions?
40,000 x $5,000,000 = $200,000,000,000. That number, 200 with nine zeroes after it, would be called $200 billion regardless of whether you were in the US or Australia. OECD, World Bank, IMF, EU, US Treasury, HM Treasury,
etc all use the convention that 1 billion is 1000 million or a 1 with nine zeroes after it.