Thomas Schaller writes on Salon about the confusion people have with words like millions and billions and trillions. He gives an example:

But a million seconds takes about 11 days to expire; because a billion is a thousand million, a billion seconds takes about 30 years to expire; because a trillion is a thousand billion, a trillion seconds takes about 30,000 years to expire.

Our federal debt is headed toward $10 trillion, which means if we stopped adding to it immediately, and all credit holders (yeah you, China) stopped charging us interest, and we started paying down the debt at $1 per second, it would take about 300,000 years to retire. In fact, we are adding to it and accruing interest.

Don’t worry, he adds, surely the Wall Street bailouts and tax cuts will solve the dilemma.