MONEY

Bill Gates is no longer the richest person in the world. That honor now goes to Carlos Slim Helu', Mexican business tycoon. He's worth $73 billion. Gates comes in second at $67 billion. Warren Buffet has gone down to fourth, at $53 billion.
Just how much is a billion dollars:

• A billion seconds ago is 31 years.
• A billion minute age was just after the time of Christ.
• A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
• A tightly packed stack of $1000 bills totaling one billion would be 63 miles high.
• Yet a billion dollars of spending by our federal government was only late yesterday afternoon.
• Our current debt: over 16.5 trillion dollars. (A trillion dollars is a thousand billion). A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon we're talking real money.