See this page at http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/large.html and both European and "American" definitions of a billion are of French origin. In practice, anything over trillion is rarely used.
Use SI prefixes and there is no confusion. However, SI prefixes are not known to be used in finance, nor are there any use of prefixed ISO 4217 codes at http://www.bsi-global.com/Technical+Information/Publications/_Publications/tig90.xalter known, such as GUSD for 10^9 US Dollars and TUSD for 10^12 US Dollars. The SI deals with physical units, not currencies. The BIPM has not officially endorsed use of SI prefixes for currency codes, whether ISO 4217 or "local" codes. J JIH __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com
