What Does A Trillion Dollars Look Like? All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"... A billion dollars... A hundred billion dollars... Eight hundred billion dollars... One Trillion dollars... How much is that?

 “Trillion” is tossed around like so many doggie treats  Let’s get a sense of what a trillion dollars looks like.

We’ll start with a $100 dollar bill Largest denomination in general circulation We’ve seen them; we’ve owned one Make friends wherever they go.

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000 Easily fits in your pocket A good week of shamefully decadent fun.

This little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000) You could stuff it in a grocery bag and walk around with it Looks a bit underwhelming.

$100 million is a bit more respectable Fits neatly on a standard pallet...

$1 Billion dollars... Pallets are stacked one high Now we're getting somewhere...

 The one we've heard so much about  It's a million million  It's a thousand billion  It's a one followed by 12 zeros  1,000,000,000,000.

These pallets are double stacked Those are all $100 bills When you hear someone toss around the phrase “a trillion dollars“... this is it!

That’s what a trillion dollars looks like