What comes after a trillion?

It's the Pitts
Article Image Alt Text

Cash is trash. Or soon will be.

Don’t believe me? There’s something called the U.S. National Debt Clock, and I’d encourage you to pay a visit on your computer or smartphone. As I write this on May 12, the U.S. national debt is $28,281,564,802. That’s over $28 trillion, but by the time you read this it will be $100 billion more. I can’t give you a more accurate number because the debt clock is spinning faster than my grandpa in his grave after he heard about the sorry state of America’s finances. The way the current administration is printing money, I don’t think it’s too early to discuss what comes after a trillion. It’s quadrillion and it’s only a matter of time before we reach that miserable milestone.

Let me put this in perspective for you: $1 billion in $100 bills weighs 11 tons, so $1 trillion would weigh 22 million pounds!

Or, consider this. If you spent a dollar a day since the day Christ was born, you would NOT have spent $1 billion. You’d have a quarter of that billion left to go on spending for another 760 years!

Or, look at it this way: One million dollars in $1,000 bills would be 8 inches high. One billion dollars in $1,000 bills is 666 feet high, or 110 feet taller than the Washington Monument. One hundred billion dollars in $1,000 bills is 66,600 feet high or 12 miles. Our national debt at close to $30 trillion in $1,000 bills stacked to the sky would be 3,600 miles high! But since the U.S. stopped printing the $1,000 bill, the largest denomination printed is the $100 bill, so our national debt would be 36,000 miles high in legal tender. Keep in mind that this is stacked money, not placed end to end.

The full article is available in our e-Edition. Click here to subscribe.

Holyoke Enterprise

970-854-2811 (Phone)

130 N Interocean Ave
PO Box 297
Holyoke CO 80734