Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by dkersten on Saturday January 08, 2011 @10:10AM
(#2083149)
Pffft! They're aiming low. I have one hundred and fifty trillion dollars[1] sitting right here on my desk. A 100 trillion dollar bill and a 50 trillion dollar bill :)
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by tehjones on Saturday January 08, 2011 @10:02AM
(#2083131)
Okay, Lets go for an easier representation of this scale. The author states that 100 Million dollars fits on a standard pallet. If we take a standard us pallet[1], we find that within a standard container[2] we can fit 9 pallets[3].
There fore One Trillion Dollars will fit into
1 000 000 000 000 /
(9 * 100 000 000)
= 1111.111... containers.
Lets round up to 1112 for the sake of transportation convenience.
If we take a large container ship like the COSCO Guangzhou[4] we can see that it will cary 9450 TEU[5] containers.
As you can see one of these large ships can carry
9450/1112 = 8.499
container loads of trillion dollars.
From this we can see that I expected a large container ship to carry much less, so my conclusions is kind of out the window. Damn that is a big ship.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by Dove on Saturday January 08, 2011 @11:37AM
(#2083298)
That's a good thought on how to represent the volume, though. A 1000 TEU ship is a medium size feeder. A bit of googling around gets me the Logan James, 1055 TEU: http://smithholdingsgroup.com/Shipping.html
A trillion dollars fits on a ship of roughly that size.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by Samuel_Michon on Saturday January 08, 2011 @10:48AM
(#2083215)
That's exactly what I was thinking upon reading the article. When talking about billions of dollars of deficits or stimuli, it's not cash or even gold equivalent we're talking about. It's virtual, based on a gentleman's agreement between banks. Most of the money is created by banks, when people like you and me come to them for a loan or a mortgage.
So the conclusion of the article is false:
"the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... [1.5 acres of double-stacked pallets of $100 dollar bills] is what they're talking about."
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by Encosia on Saturday January 08, 2011 @11:55AM
(#2083347)
That's interesting. That puts hard currency at about one half of November's $1.8tn M1 estimate. I've always assumed that currency represented a much larger portion of the M1.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by ck2 on Saturday January 08, 2011 @09:42AM
(#2083099)
So, in perspective, USA gross national product (annual) is $14 trillion, so 14 of those (acres or football fields of pallets would have been a better reference).
USA annual defense spending is $1.35 trillion (more than every other country on earth combined). This does not include the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (hidden in "emergency spending", basically debt sold to China) or the huge medical expenditures to keep tens of thousands of wounded soldiers alive for years after.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by hugh3 on Saturday January 08, 2011 @10:39AM
(#2083190)
I find the most useful way to visualise a trillion dollars (when we're talking about US Government spending (which is generally the only time we hear about trillions of dollars) is to just visualise $3,257 in the hands of each of the 307 million people in the United States.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by Confusion on Saturday January 08, 2011 @01:34PM
(#2083601)
And it should be downvoted now, before we devolve into a community where the first dozen comments are people being (or most likely: trying to be) funny.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by jarin on Saturday January 08, 2011 @09:43AM
(#2083100)
I'm not as concerned about what a trillion dollars looks like as I am with what a hundred million looks like. Once I get the pallet-sized stack, then trying to do something about the warehouse-sized stack is probably a lot more realistic.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by jwecker on Saturday January 08, 2011 @10:37AM
(#2083188)
Pedantic-police: The $1-million little pile there has 10 bundles of $10,000 - that's not 1 million. (or are my eyes deceiving me?) Don't have the patience to figure out if that error is propagated to the rest...
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by stan_rogers on Saturday January 08, 2011 @02:14PM
(#2083705)
Not even close. A packet is 100 bills; a packet of $100 bills is ten thousand dollars. Just a rough count of the front face of what you see in that picture will tell you that there is either more than a million there, or that the centre of the main block is hollow. Think of it this way (in a very lossy fashion): a crisp, new bill is not too very different in thickness from a premium sheet of inkjet paper. A US bill of current issue is 2.61" by 6.14", so four of them can be printed on a letter-size page with a lot of trimming waste (42% waste -- but it's the best packing you can get on letter). A ream of paper is 500 sheets, so with a whole lot of waste, a pile of paper about the size of a ream of ordinary office paper is $200,000 dollars. Paper is ordinarily sold in boxes of ten reams, and if you are familiar with the standard size box of office paper, well, you are familiar with something that is 42% bigger than is needed to hold two million dollars in $100 bills.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by InfinityX0 on Saturday January 08, 2011 @02:07PM
(#2083695)
A trillion dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? The willingness to take on hordes of debt to obsessively work on building something you, and others, will love.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by ck2 on Saturday January 08, 2011 @09:44AM
(#2083101)
Have you ever stood on a football field or acre of land?
Imagine that full of pallets of $100 bills.
To me that's quite a visual, vertical has no spacial reference.
UPDATE: I did some quick calculations and if my math is right, it's more like over THREE acres for a single stacked pallet. Double stacked as in the image would cut it down to just over 1.5 acres.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by burgerbrain on Saturday January 08, 2011 @12:05PM
(#2083365)
No, I agree. Stacked vertically would have a much more dramatic visual effect, which is what I assume the author is going for. I remember when I was younger I saw a diagram of different types of computer storage stacked into piles. I think it might have been the number of floppies in a CD, then a DVD, but I can't really recall... anyway, it was impressive.
Re:What does one trillion dollars look like?
by ck2 on Sunday January 09, 2011 @09:13AM
(#2085488)
I'm wondering if you live in a city with tall buildings (I don't) so we have different points of reference?
To me, large amounts of land are definitely more distinctive than vertical, especially when it takes you a long amount of time to walk across, you get the perspective of your small size in comparison.
Let's say the stack was twice as high as the empire state building, does that really give you perspective? To me that would be meaningless, I have no understanding of such height.
[1] Admitedly its out-of-circulation zimbabwe dollars that would be worth maybe $5 if it were still in circulation. Heres what one hundred trillion dollars looks like: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3e/Zimbabwe_%2410...
There fore One Trillion Dollars will fit into 1 000 000 000 000 / (9 * 100 000 000) = 1111.111... containers. Lets round up to 1112 for the sake of transportation convenience.
If we take a large container ship like the COSCO Guangzhou[4] we can see that it will cary 9450 TEU[5] containers.
As you can see one of these large ships can carry 9450/1112 = 8.499 container loads of trillion dollars.
From this we can see that I expected a large container ship to carry much less, so my conclusions is kind of out the window. Damn that is a big ship.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallet#ISO_pallets [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit [3]http://www.epal-pallets.org/uk/produkte/vergleich.php [4]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COSCO_Guangzhou [5]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit
A trillion dollars fits on a ship of roughly that size.
Currency in circulation: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CURRENCY
M1: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M1
M2: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2
MZM: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MZM
So the conclusion of the article is false:
"the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... [1.5 acres of double-stacked pallets of $100 dollar bills] is what they're talking about."
USA annual defense spending is $1.35 trillion (more than every other country on earth combined). This does not include the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (hidden in "emergency spending", basically debt sold to China) or the huge medical expenditures to keep tens of thousands of wounded soldiers alive for years after.
1.) The people that post more technical stuff do so from work and don't use HN as much on weekends.
2.) Everyone is in "weekend mode" and wants to post more fun stuff.
3.) I am in "weekend mode" and my desire to click on fun stuff is biasing my impression of what is posted.
http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/calculations.html
It's just that dollar bills look pretty small next to feet. The perspective also makes it look smaller.
One million dollars takes up several duffel bags. Here's a picture I found that I can't verify but HuffPost thinks it's true:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2008-05-27-1MillionDollars....
Even if it's not 100%, it's much closer to that than the size of two shoes. Here is a picture from the same article of 100 million:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2008-05-27-100MillionCash.j...
The text right next to the picture says 100 bundles of $10,0000.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
Imagine that full of pallets of $100 bills.
To me that's quite a visual, vertical has no spacial reference.
UPDATE: I did some quick calculations and if my math is right, it's more like over THREE acres for a single stacked pallet. Double stacked as in the image would cut it down to just over 1.5 acres.
To me, large amounts of land are definitely more distinctive than vertical, especially when it takes you a long amount of time to walk across, you get the perspective of your small size in comparison.
Let's say the stack was twice as high as the empire state building, does that really give you perspective? To me that would be meaningless, I have no understanding of such height.
http://bit.ly/dnRfBG