172 Big Macs for every man, woman and child in the UK!

A strange title I’m sure you would agree, but reviewing the papers today on the RBS losses got me thinking about how much money £24 billion, which is their declared loss, actually is.

Most of us would struggle to comprehend a number so astronomically huge and in fact try and ask someone to write down 24 billion as a number and I bet most people would think about for a while. Here goes: 24,000,000,000. Lots of zeros aren’t there. How can it be possible that a bank with a market capitalisation (value of issued shares) of around £50 billion can lose half that value in one year? It would be like Saffron Building Society which has capital of £50 million, making a £24 million loss. Just incomprehensible; and don’t worry we are making healthy profits.

So I got to thinking what does such a big number mean to each of us in the UK. Well according to the 2007 census and an updated mid 2008 estimation, there are 60,943,912 men, women and children in the UK. So the loss equates to £393.80 for each of us, or put another way 79 trips to the cinema each or 984 pints of milk each.

My major concern is how much future taxes will have to go up to pay for all the bail out schemes that the government have put in place, I hope Brown and Darling know what they are doing!!!