Long Scale Billionaires/short Scale Trillionaires
In countries that use the long scale number naming system, a billionaire would have one million million (1,000,000,000,000) units of currency. Under the short scale number naming system, an individual with such a fortune would be a trillionaire. There are no known euro or U.S. dollar trillionaires – in U.S. dollars, such a fortune would be roughly equivalent to the entire 2010 gross domestic product of Mexico. However, some individuals have attained fortunes of over one trillion units in other currencies. According to VnExpress, 9 Vietnamese had stock market assets valued at over one trillion đồng (US$47.5 million) by the end of 2011. According to the Korea Herald, there were 16 Koreans with stock market assets valued at over one trillion won (US$895 million) on March 9, 2012. According to the Jakarta Globe, 116 Indonesians had assets worth over one trillion rupiah (US$117 million) in 2011.
In countries affected by severe hyperinflation, some individuals can become trillionaires as currency units are printed in larger and larger denominations, although in such cases the currency itself quickly becomes virtually worthless.
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Famous quotes containing the words long, scale and/or short:
“Swann was one of those men who, having long lived in the illusions of love, saw the well-being that they gave to many women heighten their happiness without evoking in these women any gratitude, any tenderness toward them; but in their child these men believe they feel an affection which, embodied in their very name, will make them outlast their death. When there was to no longer be a Charles Swann, there would still be a Mademoiselle Swann ... who would continue to love her departed father.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“However far modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)