A billion dollars isn't what it used to be, assuming that billion dollars comes in the form of a lotto jackpot. With the Powerball prize now climbing above that mark—Wednesday's jackpot is an estimated $1.2 billion—the Wall Street Journal takes a look at the dwindling cash value that translates to. Blame the Federal Reserve, essentially. As NerdWallet explains, there's not $1.2 billion lounging in a Powerball vault right now. If you take the money it has on hand for the jackpot and invest it in a portfolio of bonds for three decades, you arrive at the $1.2 billion. And here's where the Fed comes in.
"With the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to a 22-year high, it takes far fewer 2023 dollars to buy bonds that pay out a billion dollars by 2052," explains the Journal. Indeed, Powerball had a $490 million cash value on Monday, but thanks to those high interest rates, that translated into the $1.04 billion jackpot. That qualifies as "the tiniest 10-figure jackpot ever," and one that the Journal compares to the nearly equivalent $1 billion Mega Millions jackpot in 2021: The cash value was $776 million, but far lower interest rates only got it to the $1 billion mark.
If someone wins on Wednesday and opts for the cash prize, they'll end up with $551.7 million, or less than half of the advertised total. ABC News reports the $1.2 billion qualifies as the third-largest Powerball sum ever and the seventh-largest jackpot among US lotteries. (More lottery stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
