12/84Estimated number of defense-industry jobs that would be lost in the event of a nuclear freeze: 250,000
2/85Percentage increase since 1980 in the number of Houston businesses filing for bankruptcy each month: 276
7/85Number of U.S. military officers who have retired since 1980 and taken jobs with defense contractors: 1,900
In South Africa: 4
9/86Combined debt of Iowa farmers: $16,300,000,000
2/88Losses the top five Japanese insurance companies took on U.S. government securities in 1987: $13,000,000,000
3/88Estimated number of employees on the congressional payroll who are relatives of representatives or senators: 74
4/88Number of “obscenity specialists” employed by the Department of Justice: 93
6/88Acres of wilderness Bolivia will preserve in exchange for a $650,000 reduction in its foreign debt: 3,000,000
8/88Chances that a New York City traffic officer was assaulted on the job in 1987: 1 in 5
9/88Number of Democratic National Committee staffers whose job title is Press Office Liaison to Celebrities: 1
10/89Portion of the trading on the Mexican stock exchange that consists of government-debt securities: 3/4
10/89Percentage of job applicants to the Houston Police Department who say they have used marijuana: 50
12/89Number of U.S. companies financed with junk bonds that have failed to meet loan obligations this year: 20
Number of developing countries that have failed to meet loan obligations to the World Bank this year: 9
12/89Total value of the loans disbursed to developing countries in 1988: $92,000,000,000
Total debt service paid by developing countries in 1988: $142,000,000,000
Combined long-term corporate debt of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler: $9,000,000,000
8/89Number of candidates who have declined the job of under secretary for acquisition at the Pentagon this year: 47
1/90Net foreign debt owed to U.S. government, businesses, and citizens in 1981, per American family: $2,500
Net foreign debt owed by U.S. government, businesses, and citizens in 1989, per American family: $11,000
5/90Ratio of Latin America’s total foreign debt to U.S. aid that President Bush has pledged to the region for next year: 400:1
8/90Percentage of all savings and loan associations that failed during the Depression: 5
Percentage that the government expects will fail in the next five years: 25
1/91Number of on-the-job injuries to Library of Congress employees in 1989 that “involved hot substances”: 15
Number that “involved floors or other walking surfaces”: 51
1/91University of Colorado employees traveling to the Orange Bowl this month to handle mascot Ralphie the Buffalo: 12
10/91Number of the last four U.S. recessions that were interrupted by a brief economic recovery: 3
11/91Rank of murder, among the most common causes of on-the-job death for female workers in the United States: 1
11/91Percentage of Americans who say that the first thing they’ll do when the recession ends is “go out to dinner”: 48
12/91Percentage of annual U.S. economic aid to Israel that is used to pay debts to the United States: 99
3/91Total salary Drexel Burnham has paid two of its financial analysts since declaring bankruptcy last May: $1,933,332.20
4/91Percentage increase, during 1990, in the number of times the word “recession” appeared in the New York Times: 200
7/91Number of hours that U.S. convenience-store employees spend counting pennies each year: 5,500,000
11/92Percentage of the 417,000 jobs Bush says have been created this year that were government-financed summer jobs: 40
11/92Portion of the 267,000 jobs lost in California this year that were defense-related: 1/5
12/92Percentage change, since 1970, in the number of American women working more than one job: +390
2/92Number of jobs George Bush promised in 1988 to create by the end of his second term as president: 30,000,000
5/92Percentage of U.S. Department of Agriculture employees who provide services to farmers: 21
8/92Percentage of French women who do not view being asked to undress for a job interview as sexual harassment: 20
7/93Number of beds at Massachusetts General Hospital, per billing-department employee: 3.5
1/94Number of America’s ten largest industrial companies that have created new jobs since the end of the recession: 1
12/94Rank of the local, state, and federal governments among the top three employers in Indianapolis: 1,2,3
6/94Number of government employees Vice President Gore invited to accompany him on his trip to Russia last December: 600
Number this was reduced to after Ambassador Thomas Pickering complained: 200
10/95Number of Wal-Mart plastic owls a NASA employee bought last May to protect the space shuttle from woodpeckers: 6
12/95Number of French job-seekers whose resumes were printed on wine bottles by local vintners last spring: 1,000
3/95Number of years McDonald’s has been suing 2 unemployed Britons for distributing pamphlets calling its food “unhealthy”: 4
9/95Average percentage change in the salary of an American who changed jobs during the last recession: -22
3/96Ratio of aerospace jobs lost in California last year to the number of new jobs in the film industry: 1:2
7/96Ratio of professional jobs available in Mexico in the 1980s to the number of Mexicans who graduated from college then: 1:4
5/97Amount the World Bank will finish spending this year on an expansion of its Washington headquarters: $314,000,000
Ratio of the project’s cost overruns to overdue debt the Bank’s client countries cannot exceed without penalty: 5,150:1
1/98Chance that an American declared bankruptcy during the Depression: 1 in 215
Chance that an American declared bankruptcy last year: 1 in 225
10/98Total bad debt Japan estimates is held by its banks, expressed as a percentage of its GDP: 17.5
10/98Total bad debt held by American S&Ls in 1988, expressed as a percentage of U.S. GDP that year: 3.2
10/98Rank of General Motors, among the largest private employers in Mexico: 1
12/98Number of countries whose “unsustainable” debt the World Bank identified as “in need” of relief in 1996: 40
3/98Ratio of the outstanding short-term debt owed foreign banks by South Korea to the size of the I.M.F.-led bailout: 1:1
1/99Number of words devoted to the Depression in Houghton Mifflin’s fifth-grade history book, Build Our Nation: 332
2/99Estimated chances that a U.S. corporate merger will result in short- and long-term shareholder losses: 2 in 3
2/99Number of S&Ls or shareholder groups seeking damages from the government over its handling of the 1980s bailout: 120
Estimated amount by which the awards sought will exceed the bailout’s original $165 billion cost: $50,000,000,000
3/99Percentage change since 1996 in the value of initial public offerings of stock in Silicon Valley companies: -45
3/99Keys required, along with the alt key, to type the euro symbol on new Windows-compatible keyboards sold in the U.S.: 0,1,2,8
4/99Estimated attendance at a rally for debt relief for poor countries held outside Britain’s 1998 G-7 summit: 60,000
4/99Factor by which U.S. stock market growth must exceed GDP growth for Social Security stock investment to work: 5
6/99Chance that a U.N. peacekeeper killed on the job since 1948 died as a result of combat or other hostilities: 1 in 3
8/99Year in which George W. Bush first described juvenile “superpredators” as “fatherless, jobless, fearless, and godless”: 1996
1/00Percentage of the French government’s 1788 expenditures that went to support the court at Versailles: 6
Percentage that went to finance war debt resulting from France’s support of the colonies in the American Revolution: 50
12/00Ratio of the monthly salary the U.N. pays its native clerks in East Timor to what it pays its other employees there: 1:5.6
2/00Percentage change in the stock price of Microsoft rival Red Hat in the five weeks after the antitrust ruling: +218
4/00Percentage change in foreign direct investment in Vietnam between 1991 and 1996: +1,142
Percentage change since then: -43
4/00Total return on a dollar invested in the “socially responsible” Domini 400 Social Index in 1990: $5.75
8/00Percentage of public relations executives who say they have “had to lie ” in the course of their jobs: 25
1/01Amount Florida state employees donated to the Bush campaign last year for every dollar they donated to Gore: $4.92
1/01Ratio of Zambia’s foreign-debt payments in 1999 to what it is projected to pay this year under proposed debt relief: 2:3
3/01Annual number of U.S. elementary school students who play The Stock Market Game, a 10-week trading simulation: 200,000
Additional amount they may borrow on margin: $100,000
7/01Number of the sixteen previous Republican presidents who experienced a recession during their first term in office: 15
9/01Minimum number of countries in which at least half the children are no longer in school by the age of eleven: 11
1/02Amount of debt carried by New York City’s government, per resident, before September 11: $5,066
10/02Value of the Dow Jones industrial average in 1996 when Alan Greenspan warned of investors’ “irrational exuberance”: 6,437
2/02Total annualized percentage return on New York City’s stock markets on perfectly sunny days between 1982 and 1997: +25
4/02Number of people charged between 1988 and 1992 in connection with the U.S. savings and loan collapse: 1,098
Ratio of the average S&L jail term awarded in those years to the average term for a federal burglary conviction: 2:3
4/02Fine paid by Neil Bush in 1991 after federal regulators found him guilty of “ethical lapses”: $50,000
Minimum number of violations for which the Securities and Exchange Commission cited George W. Bush in the same year: 4
9/02Ratio of U.S. external debt to that of all developing countries combined: 1:1
9/02Ratio of the amount the U.S. pays to service this debt to the total amount developing countries pay: 1:15
10/03Years before Enron declared bankruptcy in 2001 that the IRS asked the SEC to investigate the firm: 2.5
12/03Chance that a civilian federal worker is employed by the Department of Homeland Security: 1 in 12
8/03Percentage of Americans who say they have “always had credit card debt”: 11
11/05Salary of a new State Department job created, in Secretary Rice’s words, to “accelerate the demise” of Castro’s regime: $145,000
5/05Number of “certified laughter leaders” employed by the U.S. Army to help families of reservists: 20
10/06Number of Americans whose past-due accounts the IRS will turn over to private debt collectors by 2008: 350,000
2/06Average percentage by which U.S. senators’ investments outperform the stock market each year: 12
9/06Estimated number of Americans who get degrees each year from nonaccredited “diploma mills”: 100,000
Number of Pentagon employees who had such degrees on their résumés, in a recent congressional study: 257
1/07Percentage change since 2002 in the number of U.S. Air Force security clearances revoked due to personal debt: +900
10/07Head of cattle that Fidelity Investments keeps on a portion of its corporate campus near Fort Worth: 25
11/07Factor by which the education-related debt of African-American Ph.D.’s exceeds that of white Ph.D.’s: 2
3/07Number of consecutive months that the American workforce has spent more than its take-home pay: 20
Number of previous months since the Depression that this had been the case: 0
5/07Amount that Alan Greenspan reportedly received for the February 26 speech in which he warned of a recession: $150,000
Total value that U.S. stock markets lost the next day, partly as a result of his warning: $632,000,000,000
8/07Number of U.N. staffers in New York who still have full-time jobs monitoring Iraq for weapons of mass destruction: 34
Date on which the U.S. first proposed a Security Council resolution to disband the monitoring team: 6/8/07
11/08Estimated value of U.S. economic growth lost due to the global credit crisis: $2,000,000,000,000
5/08Number of Silicon Valley workers earning between $30,000 and $80,000 who have lost their jobs since 2002: 62,000
9/08Rank of this year’s economic crisis among the “largest financial shocks since the Great Depression,” according to the IMF: 1
1/09Estimated amount Bush-era policies will cost the U.S. in new debt and accrued obligations: $10,350,000,000,000