The largest debt ever
Way back in seventh grade, a kid was begging around for 50 cents to go buy a soda with. He wasn’t having much luck, until finally my friend assented and lent him the 50 cents. But it was on an absurd condition: 100% interest per day. So if the kid paid him back the next day (which we kind of assumed would happen) it would be $1.00, if he missed that day and then brought it in the next day he’d owe $2.00, etc. Well, the kid never repaid my friend’s debt. He probably had no intention of ever paying it back, which was why he took the silly offer in the first place.
Later in the semester I had some fun and calculated how much the kid “owed” my friend. It was billions of dollars. That was nine years ago. The debt has since risen to something like $2^3,300 (bet you don’t see that notation used with dollar figures often). Unless someone else on the planet has made the same kind of a silly lending deal, that debt now eclipses the combined amounts of all other debts on the planet. And all over a single, stupid soda.
Now, of course, the debt is never going to be repaid, but if I were my friend, and I was prone to illogical fantasies, I would consider myself the richest person in the world. After all, I would be owed ungodly sums of money.
