Washington boffins calculate new sub-prime number

Hot on the heels of the new prime number discovered by mathematicians at UCLA comes a new sub-prime number – the largest yet.

The number, 700,000,000,000, was hailed by Professor Nancy Pelosi of the Congressional Mathematics Faculty as a “great find”. However, she added that if Dr John McCain, Supernumerary Visiting Fellow from Arizona Polytechnic, hadn’t spilled coffee all over the computer last week, they’d have worked it out much sooner. Professor Hank Paulson, Dean of the Federal School of Pure and Applied Nervous Sweating, was unavailable for comment.

A sub-prime number is one that can be divided by the total number of American taxpayers and still leave a figure large enough to make each of them wince at the cost of bailing out the banking system.