What does a TRILLION dollars look like?

[opsec]

http://www.varmintal.com/trillion-dollars.htm

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, here is 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, slightly 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.

[opsec]

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.

[opsec]

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

[opsec]

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 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. $1000,000,000,000.00

[opsec]

Ladies and gentlemen... Here is $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000.00). (And notice those pallets are double stacked $100 bills.) It would be 100 this high if it were $1 bills. Hey, that's the author standing at the lower left hand corner, thinking this must be a stimulus package. It will surly stimulate the Democrat president, house and senate to pass laws for more.. So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... that's what they're talking about. 

[Mike]

That didn't help me comprehend $1 Trillion dollars a bit. 

I am just a little bit closer to believing I can't comprehend  a trillion.

[opsec]

If you had to haul that $1T by truck using standard 48' trailers, then by double stacking the pallets as shown in the picture, and by "pinwheeling" all the pallets (in other words, cramming for every inch in that trailer), it would take 209 trailers to move it all (48 pallets per load). That's just the minimum number of trailers it would take assuming that you were cramming the trailers as full as you could get them and ignoring the DOT weight limits. If you wanted the trucks to be weight legal, then you could safely double the number of trailers. Paper is really heavy. Next time you drive past a Walmart distribution center, take a look in the yard and see how much space 209 trailers occupy.

[hancocs]

I thought it was a good visual on  1 trillion bucks. If you enlarge that last picture and look at the guy in the lower left conner, it gives you a pretty good visual of what 1 trillion dollars would look like if you were standing next to it. Hard to to see the end. Bottom line it's alot of money that the U.S. will never be able to pay back.

[Mike]

Sure! I can comprehend 209 trailers.  But the devil is in the trailers..... an unimaginable amount of bills.  And that's each trailer.

[MountainMeg]

Most people just don't get it, and that scares me.  They don't understand the scope of what's happening.

http://www.vimeo.com/4428480

My favorite: "Tri=3, so 3 million?"   

[Mike]

My favorite:

"Not even close.  Think about it.  It's a 10-base system.  There is a thousand million in a trillion."

My least favorite is my own attempt to understand: 

They said Obama's budget is $3.5 trillion.  It shouldn't hurt if we round things off: call it a "$3 Trillion" budget for a 300 million population.  That's $10k per person, not household.  I hope I didn't lose any 'zeros' punching it into my calculator.