Posted by by Kip Herriage, Ceo of Wealth Masters. Reprinted with permission on 17 February 2012 | 2 Comments

HOW MUCH IS A TRILLION?

By Kip Herriage, reposted with permission.

      Have you ever noticed how casually our main stream media, government leaders and major financial institutions seem to talk about stimulus packages, bailouts and debts numbering in the trillions? Most people have trouble getting their heads around numbers this big and some experts suggest that our brains aren't even biologically wired to handle them. For starters, a trillion is a one followed by twelve zeroes. In US currency, the one hundred dollar bill is the largest denomination in general circulation these days. You'll find Benjamin Franklin's picture on the front and he's guaranteed to make friends and open doors for you wherever he goes. A standard $10,000 bundle of these is about a half inch thick. It'll fit very comfortably in your coat pocket and buy you a pretty exciting weekend in Las Vegas.

      Believe it or not, even though it sounds like a lot more money, even a million dollars worth of hundred dollar bills still fits in a large shoebox or a small shopping bag and you can carry it around with you very easily. A hundred million stacked in a cube fits neatly on a standard shipping pallet. A billion dollars takes up eight pallets - still pretty easy to visualize. Are you ready for this? One trillion dollars stacked two pallets high would dwarf a person standing next to it and look a lot like the top secret government warehouse that Indiana Jones' crate disappeared into at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Michael Maloney, an acclaimed expert on precious metals and the world banking system does an unforgettable visual presentation on this concept at our live Wealth Masters events and if you ever see it, I guarantee it will have an impact on you.

      Not everyone processes information in exactly the same way, so here are a few more quick examples. Texas, the state I live in, takes up about 270,000 square miles. A trillion square miles would equal 3.7 million states the size of Texas. In fact, if you accept the current estimate of 50 billion square miles above sea level, a trillion square miles would actually equal around twenty earth-sized planets. A trillion one dollar bills laid end to end would stretch to the sun and back with a few bucks to spare. A trillion dollars would provide roughly three years of full coverage for the estimated 46 million people in the United States who don't have health insurance. A million seconds from now you'll be a little over 11 days older. A billion seconds from now, you'll be 32 years older. A trillion seconds from now you and I will both be dust - that's 32,000 years into the future.

      Our elected officials and the people in charge of our key financial institutions are telling us that they can save capitalism from itself with trillions in bailouts and that additional "economic stimulus" will be required. For the last 15 years, the US money supply has grown about twice as fast as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Meanwhile, Federal government liabilities have grown three times as fast. As a result, the USA now has more financial obligations than assets, making it effectively bankrupt. Where will the government get the kind of money required to cover these trillions in obligations? The answer - at some point they won't be able to get it. Everything is at risk now - the economy, jobs, basic commodities, survival necessities, housing prices - essentially our entire way of life. There's nothing casual about a trillion and it's time for our leaders to bring some scale and reality back to this global dialog.