Beijing pollution and financial crisis

It struck me today that the recent spate of gross pollution is doing to Beijinger's sense of the pollution scale what the global financial crisis did to our sense of the idea of billions versus trillions of dollars. A reading of over 500 pm2.5 (technically "beyond reading" on the US Embassy pollution monitor) has been crossed so much recently that it's been reduced somewhat--just as reports of Trillions of dollars lost in the CDO market and bailout funds of the past decade have reduced that once enormous amount of cash to the level we once associated psychologically with smaller amounts of money. Trillion is the new billion; 500+ pm2.5 is the new 150 pm2.5. Let's hope everyone's respiratory systems are able to keep up...