Billions are yesterday. Today's bank bailouts/mortgage rescues/international combat live in the land of trillions.

• $2 trillion is about what American investors have lost in their retirement savings since mid-2007.
• $2.05 trillion and $1.17 trillion are the projected federal costs of health coverage ideas floated by Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, respectively (the Lewin Group analysts; www.lewin.com )
• $1.2 trillion would roughly double what's spent on cancer research, provide treatment for every American with diabetes or heart disease currently unmanaged, provide global immunization for kids, start universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old kid in the nation and help rebuild New Orleans (David Leonhardt, the New York Times).
• $10 trillion to $20 trillion was the projected estimated gain of privatizing Social Security (allowing stock/bond investment) in a 1996 lecture by Martin Feldstein, Harvard prof and then-president of the National Bureau of Economics Research. (Funny how 1996 sounds like pre-history after 9/11, $100-plus for a barrel of oil -- vs. $30 a barrel in 2003 -- and our current trillion-dollar national meltdown.)
• $4 trillion is how much the national debt has grown under President Bush; $10 trillion is roughly the current national debt; $11.315 trillion is the new debt "ceiling" allowed under the bailout legislation (CBS News).

If you prefer a slightly lighter touch, here's research from Andrew Davis of the Libertarian Party:

• A trillion would buy everyone in Los Angeles a Lamborghini Gallardo or two.
• Allow half the members of the Democratic Party to attend an Obama fund raiser at the admission price of $28,500 each.
• Give every household in America two Mitsubishi 73-inch HDTVs.
• Allow every resident of Buffalo, NY, to buy their own 65-acre island in Panama.

Once you start trippin' with trillions, the California state budget deficit -- the new one, $3 billion and growing -- sounds like chump change.