Saturday 4 April 2009

Some Facts About A Trillon Dollars,

a trillion, it is a word thrown around with careless abandon at the G20 summit, but think on these facts, the US Bureau Of Engraving And Printing produces 38 million notes a day, so printing one trillion new notes from scratch and working seven days a week would take just over 72 years, yes 72 years! and you would need 429,646 tonnes of ink to complete the job, stacked in one pile, one trillion one dollar notes, each 0.0043in thick, would be 67,866 miles high put another way, the stack would be 8.6 times the diameter of the earth, running through the North and South Poles (7,901 miles), if the world’s leaders spent the one trillion dollars at the rate of a dollar a second, they would still be spending it in 31,689 years, on the other hand, if they want to get through it all within ten years, they would need to spend 3,169 dollars a second, the mind-boggling figure from the G20 summit is considerably more dollars than there are in circulation, according to the US Federal Reserve, there are just 829 billion US dollars in existence, it also costs 6.4 cents to print each note — so it’s a good job the massive sum will be passed on electronically, otherwise there would be a 64billion dollar black hole in the leaders’ historic bailout package, which would rather defeat the point, bearing all of the above in mind I had better make more room under the bed in case I win a trillion on the lottery!

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