How Much Money is 700 Billion Dollars?

[Bob In Ct]

Recently the federal government decided to find 700 billion dollars ($700,000,000,000) to prop-up our ever imploding financial system. In an effort to truly demonstrate how much money we’re talking about I have done some simple math.

A brand new $20 bill has a thickness of 0.0043 inches. If you went to the bank with enough money to buy one inch of twenties you would need $4,651. That’s the value of one inch of twenties. If you were to keep withdrawing twenties until you had 700 billion dollars you would have a stack of bills 150,505,267 inches high. That’s 12,542,105 feet high, which is 2,375 miles high! That’s not end to end, that’s twenty dollar bills in bundles stacked one on top of each other. If the stack fell over it would reach Nevada from Connecticut.

So that’s how much money 700 billion (700,000 million) dollars is. Now you know.


Bob

[MChat]

If you were standing in the doorway to a room (perfect cube), filled with stacked $100 bills totaling $700 billion, the room would be 64 feet, 9.25" on each side.

If you were to start handing out the bills at a rate of one per second ($100 per second), it would take you 221 years, 9 months, 24 days, 7 hours, 56 minutes and 40 seconds before you reached the end.

If you wanted to transport the actual bills, it would take over 905 cargo vans (like a Ford E350 long cargo van), and if you spaced the convoy out so that there were 2 van lengths between the vans, the convoy would stretch over 10 miles.


Edit: if we stick with $20 bills...

The room needs to be 110 feet - 9 inches on each side.

And it would take over 1109 years at 1 bill per second.

To transport it would take over 4500 vans and the convoy would stretch over 51 miles.