Pre-Ramble: Yesterday’s news included a report indicating that the number of billionaires in the world had dropped by 30 percent in the past year. Apparently, of the 1,125 billionaires on the 2008 list, just 752 remain.

You know it’s bad when you’ve been booted off the billionaires’ list. (I’m sure I can imagine that.) Well so, how do they tell you exactly? It’s not like they can just announce it over the PA during homeroom. Is there some kind of siren that goes off? Is it like the Oscar nominations where they call you at the crack of dawn? Or, are you left to read about it in the paper like every other schmuck with dwindling assets? And actually, how do you even know that you’re officially on the celebrated list in the first place?  Is somebody in charge of monitoring everyone’s bank account and pocket change?

Forbes Magazine, it seems, is the keeper of the lists. In fact, they have a whole list of lists. I’m not sure how they track and verify their data, but in addition to the list of The World’s Billionaires, they have lists of The World’s Millionaires, The Richest Americans, and separate lists of the richest people from Australia, New Zealand, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philipines and Singapore. Forbes also releases lists in other exceptional categories like best companies, restaurants, schools, zip codes, sports teams, and even charities.

So, back to the plight of the fallen billionaires — you’ll be relieved to know that our own Bill Gates has been restored to the top spot on the list with a reported $40 billion, and even though he lost a spectacular $25 billion in the last 12 months, savvy investor and Obama BFF, Warren Buffett weighs in at No. 2 with $38 billion. 

It’s really tough for me to get my head around numbers this big, and if you stop to consider the kind of bank we’re talking about in the ga-jillion dollar stimulus package… well, that almost becomes illusory.

To put it into some kind of perspective, internet sources describe one billion dollars as ”someone giving you $1,000 every day for 2,738 years.”  That’s a lot of years, and where do I sign up?  Other sources try to express it in terms of piles of money, or number of football fields stacked on top of each other. Still others use more unconventional means like comparing the combined weight of a billion credit cards with the equivalent weight of 1,562 hippopotamuses (hippopotami?). Frankly, the weight of a hippo is just as obscure as the concept of 787 billion of something.

The Take-Away: When in doubt, I always default to the Twinkie. This iconic, cream-filled snack-cake is a universal equalizer — everyone has a rough idea of the size and value of the golden, spongy delight … and, whether you would actually eat one or not, they are the stuff of dependability and fun.

Bearing in mind that there is no tax on Twinkies in Minnesota, the price of a single Twinkie (not a two-pack) is 69 cents. Thus, in today’s marketplace, one billion dollars will buy  1,438,848,921 Twinkies. Slicing the analogy another way, one billion Twinkies laid end to end measures 4,250,000,000 inches, which will stretch around the circumference of the Earth (equatorial distance) approximately 2.7 times.