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Hard To Picture $1 Trillion

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 21, 2008

Taxpayers' share of federal government loans and bailouts made last week approaches $1 trillion.

That's about $9,000 per household, assuming all households would share the costs, which they won't.

Or seven percent of the nation's economy.

Or 39 percent of all government tax revenues collected last year.

Or enough to give everyone in Hillsborough County a million dollars.

Or 11,000 tons of $100 bills.

Or a stack of $100 bills so high that if the orbiting space station crashed into it, the impact would hit the bottom half of the stack.

A trillion is a number hard to grasp by the human imagination. It's so big that many people haven't even bothered to find out what comes next. The way Treasury is spending dollars, we might need to know.

It's a quadrillion.

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