Articles
Explanations of where the figures on this site come from, which definition each one uses, and how to verify any of them against the original filing or dataset.
Tesla's revenue fell for the first time: 2025, second by second
Tesla took in $94.8 billion in 2025, about $3,007 a second, down 3% — its first annual decline. Cars fell by a tenth while batteries for the grid grew by a quarter. What the 10-K shows, line by line.
· 5 min read
US federal debt grew by $63,420 a second in 2025 — and why that is not the deficit
Debt held by the public rose by $2.0 trillion in fiscal 2025. Interest on it now costs more than the entire defence budget. Here is what the Treasury's own ledgers show, second by second.
· 5 min read
Five oil majors per second: $45,128 in, and very different amounts kept
Aramco, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron took in $1,423 billion in 2025. Aramco kept more of it than the other four together, and BP's profit for its shareholders came to less than two dollars a second.
· 5 min read
How much do you earn per second? Average pay in Ukraine, Poland, the UK and the US
An average Ukrainian salary comes to about one kopiyka a second. A typical full-time American earns about a fifth of a cent. What the official figures behind those rates measure, and why they are harder to compare than they look.
· 5 min read
Six tech giants per second: who takes in the most, and who keeps it
Amazon takes in $22,733 a second, more than any other company on this site. It keeps $2,463 of it. Ranked by profit instead of revenue, the order of the six largest tech companies changes almost completely.
· 4 min read
Cristiano Ronaldo earns $9.51 a second — what that number is made of
Forbes puts Ronaldo at $300 million for the past year. Divided into seconds it becomes $9.51, more than twice Messi's rate. Here is what is inside the number, and what it leaves out.
· 4 min read
How Forbes estimates what an athlete earns — and what the estimate cannot include
The figures behind every celebrity money counter on the internet come from a handful of annual lists. Knowing how one of them is built tells you what the counters can and cannot support.
· 7 min read
Why the same company shows three different revenues in three places
Berkshire Hathaway reported $371 billion of revenue for 2025. It also reported $247 billion. Both are correct, and the difference explains most of the arguments about figures like these.
· 8 min read
European military spending doubled in a decade
$864 billion in 2025, up 102 per cent since 2016. Germany passed 2 per cent of GDP for the first time since 1990, Poland carries the heaviest burden in NATO, and Britain is the exception that went down.
· 7 min read
The world spent $2,887 billion on its military in 2025 — and the American share fell
The eleventh consecutive year of growth, and the first in a long while where the largest spender pulled back. The reason the US figure dropped is more interesting than the drop.
· 7 min read
What a per-second figure can and cannot tell you
Dividing an annual total by 31,536,000 is arithmetic, not measurement. The result inherits every weakness of the number you started with — and adds two of its own.
· 6 min read
How Meta makes its money: a breakdown of the filings
Meta took $200.97 billion in revenue in 2025 and its profit went down. The explanation is in four tables of the annual report, and it is more interesting than the headline.
· 9 min read