What does one TRILLION dollars 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.
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  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.
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  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.
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  While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet…
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  And $1 BILLION dollars… now we’re really getting somewhere…
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 Next we’ll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we’ve been hearing about so much. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it’s a million million. It’s a thousand billion. It’s a one followed by 12 zeros.
You ready for this?
It’s pretty surprising.
Go ahead…
Scroll down…
Ladies and gentlemen… I give you $1 trillion dollars…
  image0066(And notice those pallets are double stacked.) Hey, that’s me standing at the lower left hand corner, thinking this must be my stimulus package…
So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase “trillion dollars”… that’s what they’re talking about.  
 
   
10,000,000,000 (10 billion) in One-hundred dollar bills at 6.2¢ per copy is $6,200,000,000 ($6.2 Billion).  That would just about cover the entire budget for the state of Oregon.  There is a scary lesson here somewhere.   I just can’t figure out what it is.

Could it be that our Federal Government has grown too big and spends too much money?

Tom

BTW – I did not create this (just the last paragraph).  It was sent by a friend today and I couldn’t pass up the great picture it paints.

T.