While Australian political leaders have focused on the thousands of short term construction jobs that come from building lots of new mines, the Saudis have focused on the trillions of dollars to be gained by keeping the price high.
Has QE created an expectation that the Federal Reserve can now meddle in the markets with trillions of dollars of muscle, complicating things for normal money managers?
We're sinking trillions of dollars into finding unconventional oil and gas that we're never going to use rather than planning for the transition.
It involves trillions of dollars, the faith of the financial markets, and the ever-present fear of market panic.
It shows trillions of dollars of known and extractable coal, oil and gas, including most Canadian tar sands, all Arctic oil and gas and much potential shale gas, cannot be exploited if the global temperature rise is to be kept under the 2C safety limit agreed by the world's nations.
Trillions of dollars of known and extractable coal, oil and gas – including deposits in Canada and the Arctic – cannot be burned if the global temperature rise is to be kept under the agreed-upon goal of 2C.
In three rounds of QE, the Fed bought trillions of dollars of mortgage and US treasury bonds from banks and hedge funds to keep interest rates at zero.
The World Bank and Bank of England have both warned that international action on climate change could leave many fossil fuels assets worthless, potentially losing investors trillions of dollars.
We can collect only pennies on financial crimes that cost the country trillions in lost growth, productivity and jobs.
Elsewhere in Europe, honourable mentions go to Madrid (for its "gastronomy, public transport, cleanliness"), Amsterdam ("special because it's just a big village that is so well preserved"), and not forgetting Palladio's wry observation that, while "Nasa and Seti have spent trillions of dollars trying to find advanced civilisations, it's only £80 to Oslo".
For the moment, fintech's leading companies are still doing mere billions in trade where banks handle trillions.
