Recently, Russell Crowe appeared on Letterman’s show and the topic - inevitably - turned to our current financial crisis.

Me, I spend most of my time going “what financial crisis?” To hear pundits describe it, there are people committing spontaneous suicide all over the country, kind of like The Happening, but interesting. I know of a few people who are having conniptions over their retirement funds, but the market will correct itself.

Won’t it?

Hey, I don’t know. My bank just bought out Merril Lynch, so I think my $15 savings account is safe.

But Russell Crowe isn’t about to sit back and let the government try to solve this crisis. He has a solution! The only problem is that it doesn’t make any sense.

If you get a lot of e-mail forwards from your parents, you might have seen this trick before:

Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. Now add 30. Add another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000 Now add 10. What is the total?

If you got 5000, congratulations! You can’t add numbers in your head. That’s not the answer.

It is 4100.

It’s a very simple, easy-to-make error. It has to do with zeros. Back when I was just a young’un studying math, I always used to try and convince my mom that an answer with a dropped zero was “almost right.” She didn’t buy it, but I have a feeling Russell Crowe will.

His brilliant plan to fix the economy:

“Um, so, here’s the thing: They’re looking for $700 billion, right? Which is a good chunk of change, but have you noticed whenever you go to a bank, or whenever you talk to a government department about what you need, they’ll never actually give you all of what you need? So, I don’t think we should do that for a start.

“But I was thinking if they wanna stimulate the economy, get people spending, let people look after their … mortgage.

“I think you take the first 300 million Americans, if that’s the population at this point in time, give everyone a million bucks.”

This might sound like a brilliant, if radical, plan.

Until we do some simple multiplication and realize that 300 million x 1 million is not, in fact, 300 million. It’s 300 trillion.

Now it is true that in some countries, “one billion” means “one million times one million,” rather than “one million times one thousand.” Some loyal fans have suggested that Russell Crowe was merely confused by this.

But regardless of the value of a billion, 300 million x one million is still much, much more than 700 billion. That’s just basic math.

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