Russell Crowe solves US financial crisis

He should stick to throwing telephones at hotel clerks!

He may be dumb but the article isn't any smarter; it fails to note how he reached the misconception.

You obviously don't understand how the news is reported in Australia. When a New Zealander does well overseas they become an honorary Australian - when they make a goat of themselves they're "New Zealand-born". Further explanation is considered un-necessary. :-)

They should give 10K to every US citizen who makes less than 60K a year. That would make more sense.

Gokuma said:

They should give 10K to every US citizen who makes less than 60K a year. That would make more sense.

And if I were making 61K I would be SO okay with that.

I reckon that Crowe pays too much attention to joke e-mails. A friend sent me the exact same proposal a couple of weeks ago. It was a copy of an e-mail that had been circulating around his office.

Wait...who exactly is using faulty math here? How would giving $1 mil to every citizen cost the government $300 bil? And how would it result in everyone only getting $1?

I know I'm terrible at math, and even worse at finances, but I'd like to hear the logic behind that. IMHO, the article writer is either retarded or withholding some important facts.

Crowe Math: 300 million Americans x $1 million each = $300 million total cost

Real Math: $300 million / 300 million Americans = $1 each

Oh right.

Crowe's error is not math-related; he made an incorrect semantic relation. 700 billion (long scale) is 700 trillion (short scale). 300 million people getting 1 million bucks cost 300 billion dollars long scale. There's no indication he said the plan would cost 300 million, else they would have quoted him saying so.

AndrewB said:

And if I were making 61K I would be SO okay with that.

OK since I hold such power making further discussion purposeful, anyone making between 60 and 70K gets enough so their total income equals 70K that year. Also Dick Cheney shall be whipped 10,000 times and castrated by Fabio who will taunt him about fake butter the entire time. A vote shall be held to determine whether castration or whipping comes first.

myk said:

Crowe's error is not math-related; he made an incorrect semantic relation. 700 billion (long scale) is 700 trillion (short scale). 300 million people getting 1 million bucks cost 300 billion dollars long scale. There's no indication he said the plan would cost 300 million, else they would have quoted him saying so.

Then why does everyone think he's Failmath?

Because everyone else is. :p

Australia, New Zealand, and the US all officially use the short scale so I don't know what the long scale has to do with anything.

Ah...I knew in German, Milliard means Billion. I didn't know the specifics of why.

david_a said:
Australia, New Zealand, and the US all officially use the short scale so I don't know what the long scale has to do with anything.

Australia, where he grew up, seems to deal with both scales (because of British tradition), and if Crowe travels around the world and doesn't live in a hole (nothing surprising about a celebrity), I'm pretty sure he's familiar with either. Just having to deal with both causes confusion. In any case, I showed how the assumption the article makes (about 300 million bucks) isn't even quoted. Given the simplicity of the math required and the magnitude of the error, a semantic cause is evident. A computation didn't fail directly; symbols were confused, producing an invalid result (the plan was not for 700 trillion in American parlance).

I haven't even heard of the long scale before. Myk's theory seems sensible.

I'm familiar with the long scale but I'm no astronomer and haven't used it for years, common usage has short scale firmly entrenched in Australia's banking and finance sectors. If Russell was using long scale he's out of step with the rest of us. The $300 million might be the reporter's faulty maths.

sounds like a joke email i got from a friend about the AIG bailout.

In Britain, I wouldn't expect the word "billion" to be perceived as ambiguous except if talking to older people without much background in technical or financial disciplines. In most contexts "billion" and "trillion" can be used without further explanation to mean 10^9 and 10^12.

This reminds me that I saw a 10 million adopengo note in Ottawa. For background info, see the bottom of this page.

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