What is $500 billion? What's a trillion?

What is $500 billion? What's a trillion?
Chris in Paris · 9/22/2008 06:16:00 AM ET

A reader asked what any of the bailout numbers represent in the real world. We know $500 billion, $700 billion or now the new Paulson plan of $1.8 trillion is a lot, but put this in terms that everyone can understand. A few examples for 2007:

* Microsoft generated $51 billion in revenue.
* Citi, who has been hit hard in the credit crisis, saw $159 billion.
* Walmart's 2007 total revenue was $388 billion.
* ExxonMobil generated $404 billion.

Those are the numbers for some of the largest businesses in the US. For the US budget, here are a few examples from Bush's budget in 2007:

* Veterans' benefits at $73 billion
* Education was $90 billion
* Interest on US debt was $244 billion
* Medicare $395 billion
* Defense was $548 billion
* Social Security was $586

In total, the 2007 federal budget was a total of $2.8 trillion. The latest updates for the Paulson bailout plan are pushing $1.8 trillion. For next year, we will start the year in a pretty big financial hole and it's going to have to be made up somewhere.

http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/what-is-500-billion-whats-trillion.html

that was a stat that was in the Long Island Newsday when the deficit first hit $1 trillion dollars.

ahhh the good old days.

A high school Math department collected over the course of a couple of years.
they dumped them in the corner of the gymnasium. The pile was about 6-7 feet high in the corner and splayed out about 12 feet from the corner.

It was to show kids what one million was.

I wanted the kids and math teacher to stand in the pile and throw some up into the air (I was newspaper photog at the time...)

The kids wanted to really bad but the teacher said no. Apparently there had been discipline issues with kids playing in the pull tabs...

bummer...would of been a great shot.