How much is a quadrillion?

The question is, how much is a quadrillion?

Answer number one: it’s twice Japan’s GDP.

Answer number two: that’s how much the Japanese government now owes, after trying to lift up its economy by overspending on the back of rapidly expanding government debt.

One quadrillion dollars. More than seven-million yen per taxpayer.  One-thousand trillion yen in total, owed to Japanese’s aging savers.

Here it is in zeroes:

1,000,000,000,000,000.

And here’s the really sad thing: After twenty-three years of their government trying to fix their 1990 depression by borrowing and overspending , they’re still in it. And the debt they’ve amassed in trying to fix it has just passed the fifteen-zero barrier, and it’s accelerating.

But here’s what’s really, really sad: virtually every government in the west is trying to emulate them.

Think it will end well?

[Hat tip Riko Stevens]