by Leonard Steinberg

These days the number ‘trillion’ seems more and more commonly used…..when did that happen?  We can all agree that a billion dollars is a lot of money, but a THOUSAND billion – or a trillion – is a mammoth amount of money!

Remember when the headlines around the world screamed how APPLE had become a TRILLION dollar company. That was in August, 2018. Today, just about 33 months later, Apple is now valued at over TWO trillion dollars. Yikes! Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft all have a trillion-dollar-plus market cap too. To put this number into perspective: Just 16 countries in the world have a GDP of $1 trillion or more.

Around the 2008/9 financial crisis – one of the worst in history – an $831 billion stimulus package was designed to juice the economy through tax cuts, credits, and spending on programs such as health care, infrastructure, and education. The coronavirus emergency plan of March 2020 cost more than twice that package and equaled nearly 10% of all US GDP. 

The average home price in 2010 was around $270,000….today that is over $400,000. Some say assets should double in value every ten years to keep up with inflation…..they may have a point! One thing is for certain, during inflationary times, real estate is a good thing!