Tuesday, June 9, 2009

$1 Trillion dollars - just what does that look like?

All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"...
A billion dollars...
A hundred billion dollars...
Eight hundred billion dollars...
One TRILLION dollars...

What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.
We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet...


And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere...


Next we'll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we've been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.
Ladies and gentlemen... I give you $1 trillion dollars...

you can't hardly see the man standing beside the pallets but he's in the very far lower left hand corner- it simply dwarfs him!

1 comment:

The Friendly Neighborhood Piper said...

Well sure...but since it was old Ben who coined the phrase..."Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." i think it would be appropriate to show these in terms of just how many pints one could buy with those amounts...i think i could identify with that i bit more.