What does a quadrillion look like? Right now, it looks like the sum of Japan’s national debt, as John Schwartz writes in the New York Times.
A quadrillion is a million billion, putting it into the kind of language used by middle schoolers to describe really humongous sums, along with gazillion and bazillion. Measuring any currency in quadrillions brings to mind the hyperinflation of Germany between the wars, or Zimbabwe in the last decade. But a country with a real currency?