You can get several Daily Intels for the price of one minute of AIG's existence.Photo: istockphoto

The NYT's Floyd Norris was on this morning's conference call with AIG CEO Edward Liddy when they declared their massive writedown, and did some math that puts it into horrifying perspective.

"In the fourth quarter, A.I.G. said it lost $61.7 billion. That amounts to $465,421 per minute. To put that in perspective, every six seconds it loses enough to pay full tuition for a year at Harvard."

Or, if you are coming from a less lofty position than Floyd's, that's the cost of

• 32 Toyota Corollas (The 2009 version!)
• 227,034 venti coffees from Starbucks
•15,776 orders of steak frites from Balthazar

And Daily Intel's salary multiplied so many times we can't even tell you because it's embarrassing. That's what they've been losing. Every. Minute.

Oops, they just lost it again just now, while you were reading this.

$465,421 Per Minute [Floyd Norris/NYT]