This Is What Happens When A Billionaire Tries To Board A Plane With $1MM In Cash

http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/06/27/billionaire-christo-wiese-south-africa-richest-cash-luggage/

by daegloe • 14 years ago

8 4 14 years ago

forbes.com

allard• 14 years ago

What does MM mean? Wouldn't M work in any context other than with the currency sign?

seewhat• 14 years ago

It's fairly common in financial circles and it means "million", ie 10^6. In the same vein, MMM can mean 10^9.

quesera• 14 years ago

M is the Roman numeral for one thousand. In the financial press, MM is M*M or one million. I've also seen it used with BTUs.

Some cultures (UK?) actually do/did use M in the Roman sense to mean thousand, so 33M would mean 33 thousand. That conflicts with metric Mega 10e6, so K is becoming more popular.

In Rome of course, MM would be two thousand.

In short, it's complicated. Or at least context-sensitive.

guan• 14 years ago

It’s a really bad habit of certain financial types and inappropriate almost anywhere. Hacker News is not a financial hangout and the story is not even primarily about finance. Even a financially oriented news service like Bloomberg usually writes “million”:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:bloomberg.com+intitle:mi...

This Is What Happens When A Billionaire Tries To Board A Plane With $1MM In Cash

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