Financial Astronomy --Derivatives: Enormous "Quantities" of Money.

"Beginning the Transformation of The Financial System into the Real World -- Part I"

If you had all the money in the world, how would it stack up? If there were a "Million Dollar Bill," you could shove in your wallet or purse the same size as a One Dollar Bill, how many would you be able to carry? Some women's purses could easily carry several thousand Million Dollar Bills. Below we will address how much money you could carry and how it scales with the rest of the world. The information below concerns "finance" and actually deals with astronomical sums of money in physically understandable terms. And we also discuss pennies.

Understanding the real workings of the real world: "Self Organization, Transformity, and Information" by Howard T. Odum.

If you cannot access the following link, get thee to a library with a subscription to Science.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/242/4882/1132.pdf

Both Simple and Complex ecosystems become self-organized. An aquarium is one of the simplest self-organized systems and the easiest to understand. I will, in subsequent postings, further expand this as I have time to render it in general terms. You do not need to wait for me, and there are several places on the web where you can begin to see where the ecology of the Earth and the financial systems must be brought into meaningful congruence. Yes. Human things and human doings are going to have to change.

Odum's discussion of Self-Organization,Transformity, and Information, introduces the concept of EMERGY (eMergy) and is not for the feint of heart. It deals with the real world on which the sun shines and plants grow. It is the basement level foundation of investment in options and futures; commodities, of course, but it deals with realities and not perceptions. Most people do not realize that Logic is the foundation of Mathematics, that is fundamental to it. Bertrand Russell, and Alfred North Whitehead worked the field to its "logical end" and the brilliant Russell described the effort as the "waste of a perfectly good mind." Unlike the incomplete field of Mathematics, which can and does find and describe beautiful realms -- Logic seemed to Russell to be a mind-deadening effort.

Mathematics has application to the real world. But also to the purely imaginary. The amazing thing is probably that the banking systems and financial realms are based on the imaginary realm, and the banks and outgrowth financial systems will have to be corrected to run in a more strongly regulated and parsed and governed system. The goal of the banks and monetary systems to "rule" the world will have to be channeled, and constrained. The reason? The species is much more important than mere profit and the artificially imposed imbalance the financial systems have placed on the species. The human damage to the ecosystems have reached the point where continued use of the imbalanced financial structures of the banking system (coupled to the artificial imposition of compounded interest and future value) have now seriously threatened the existence and continuation of life as we know it on the surface of this world. The Odum's foundational works place a solid footing under what is actually valuable in the ecology and the kinds of transformations that are "real." Energy/dollars need to be placed in a perspective system.

The banks are frightened of this. Their secret meetings have produced a general cry to the rest of society, and they say to us: "Hey, we are okay, and we do not need your regulation! We know what to do to correct ourselves. You do not need to issue new regulatory mechanisms. We have it all under "control" so let's just calm down. Yes we are going to change our internal reward system. Traders and Bankers will be limited on their skims. . .No! we do not need your oversight! No! Everything is going to be all right. . ."

Well. That is not the case. This financial part of our civilization is very much in need of a restructuring and oversight and more importantly -- a complete change to the concepts of value. To allow the artificial values and concepts of unfounded progress to continue leads to planetary ecosystem change that precludes life itself. At issue is a complete change that must be a physical and philosophical change. That is why we are going to have to look at the banks very very closely and control them. Yes they have tapped one of the deadly qualities of exponential growth, and reached into the species greed and self interest and exploited them. That is why I recommend you understand in the beginning that to survive changes to this cancerous growth be made. Transformity, self-regulation, information. New grasp of old coins.

WE are going to have to control the banking and financial reward system to survive.

Image: Wikipedia, Bank for International Settlements

Car Accident Lawyer

Derivatives? Derivative slag? What is wrong with this picture?

" . . . the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations." --- Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966)

-- Wikipedia Article on the Bank for International Settlements --- (BIS)

The true evil? There are those who argue these moneychangers are mankind's salvation. I do not think that. I think they are skimmers and scammers, and in recent time and with their interlocking connections, scummers. Really, not much different than well-organized crime. In fact, they conduct criminal activities approved and sanctioned somewhat by the social systems in which they exist. Of course they can manipulate the systems -- Bear Stearns is one example. Goldman Sachs probably can't dare surrender the leverage they have. (It has been said that Paulson turned sub-prime paper (bad) to China before moving to Treasury for Bush.)

Most of you will not recall that one of Richard Nixon's favorite musical pieces was Peggy Lee's rendition of "Is that all there is?" In the song, which might have been written for the personality flavor of a Nixon, the ambition beyond the Summa Cum Laude was "let's dance and get smashed" on booze, not drugs, though a musical update might change the venue for conclusion.

The international banking cartel has this end but on a more subdued visibility. I personally think that humans with freedom to do so will rise much higher than the scummers now in power.

These "Financial Masters" think their lucre is what shapes civilization and the many societies extant. It is past the time to divest them and ourselves of their illusions and delusions. These scummers, these moneychanger's, who once some two thousand years ago, were told to leave the temple -- may soon be told to leave the temple of civilization. These cannot exist without the permission of the society in which they attempt to operate and subvert.

Al Pacino beautifully played the Godfather's logical end, as a bereft and isolated old man. Nixon found that the Presidency had honorable responsibilities and that laws actually applied to the office. With Alberto, and Rove, President Bush (II) and Chaney were read a false and fractured version of the limits to the strings of power. The fantasy that such things as "signing statements" could absolve one from the punishment for criminal behavior. There is still time for impeachment, but it would be better to prosecute all the civil treasons -- and all the financial minipulations and no bid contracts as well as the multinational thieving the Bush/Chaney organization engendered -- in civil court after they are out of office.

Their use of public monies for personal gain with greasy, oily, agreements and concessions will soon lose their value. Our societies will change -- our civilization must change -- if it wishes to survive in any form. The banking system will be changed by our changes. It will not survive in the manner it now exists.

The problem is planetary survival. The survival of of our species -- not derivative profits. Few will survive the big die-off in a Business As Usual future. Speculation rewards, as in the derivative segment are seemingly "something for nothing." Or a gamble. "Something for nothing" is a violation of God's Laws. Which of God's Laws? It is a violation of God's Laws of Thermodynamics, specifically God's Second Law of Thermodynamics. Gods Laws are very broad and this Second Law covers energy and information. When a speculator "makes a bundle" it is balanced change and there is a loss -- with a skim for nature, or God

From Wikipedia: "The BIS was originally owned by both the governments and private individuals, since the United States and France had decided to sell some of their shares to private investors. BIS shares traded on stock markets, which made the bank a unique organization: an international organization (in the technical sense of public international law), yet with private shareholders. Many central banks had similarly started as such private institutions, for example the Bank of England was privately owned until 1946. In more recent years the BIS has forcibly bought back all shares held by private investors, and is now wholly owned by its member central banks."

Yes. An international "Cartel of the Currency."

From Wikipedia: "Since 2004, the BIS has published its accounts in terms of Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, replacing the Gold Franc as the bank's unit of account. As of March 31, 2007, the bank had total assets of U.S. $409.15 billion, given a dollar/SDR exchange rate of 1.51 for March 30, 2007. Included in that total were 150 tonnes of fine gold."
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Here are links to the BIS and the retrieval of the shares held by "private" organizations of banks.
For a time there were some shares of BIS held by private concerns with no connection to privately owned "national central banks."

http://www.bis.org/about/shareswd.htm

http://www.pca-cpa.org/

Image: www.pca.org, At The Hague

This building's construction was endowed by American industrialist, Andrew Carnegie.

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If you also pop up the PDF below and read the read the numbers there you will see some interesting facts that show the Bank of International Settlements is indeed the cartel intimated by C.Quigley in 1966, though in civil and "gentle" terms.

http://www.bis.org/statistics/derstats.htm

http://www.bis.org/statistics/otcder/dt1920a.pdf

If you look at the "Amounts outstanding" and rationalize them with the "Gross market values". . .

---------------- Numbers in TRILLIONS of U.S. Dollars ---------------
----------Outstanding----------Valued at ------ Leverage Ratio
Jun 05 ---- $281.493 ------------10.605 ---------- 26.543 : 1
Dec 05 ---- $297.670 -------------9.749 ---------- 30.533 : 1
Jun 06 ---- $369.507 -------------9.936 ---------- 37.189 : 1
Dec 06 ---- $414.290 -------------9.682 ---------- 42.789 : 1
Jun 07 ---- $516.407 ------------11.140 ---------- 46.356 : 1

. . . the leverage has increased remarkably, but the top end, the commitment attached to the inflated derivatives -- is what will likely soon burst and bring down the whole cantilevered house of cards. It will quickly depress the entire world's economy. Who will live or die on the basis of the crash of markets? Oh? You do not think a world-wide crash is possible? Ah. With Business As Usual (BAU) it certainly is. The Great Die-Off looms. The irony is that the economy could be forged into a tool to save species and life itself. But the structure is unrealistically based, a false base and a false lever. A lever that gets longer, and longer. Some levers break. Like these. Soon?

Image: Wikipedia; "Total World Wealth" versus "Total World Derivatives," 1998-2007
Derivative Values

Be careful of these means of managing your risk:

Options. Swaps. Futures. Forwards. The Hedges of all hedges.

Alan Greenspan thought they spread the hurt around; softened the blow. If you can afford to eat butter, however mixed in your food it is -- at least you have the choice. Many millions of people will suffer at the edge, at the precarious border, the edge of the blow -- where for you it will be "butter" or "not." The potential global nature and cascade of interlocking distributions of hurt will be evident, even to the most insulated.

Absolutely bubbly! But over all, the solid base assets are only 11/15ths of the US GDP. That is, to secure $516 Trillion only 11 trillion is used!

Yes. There is something wrong with the picture. In essence it is like using a gob or wad of string to plug a hole in the dike but the gob or wad of string has multiple ends with multiple risks tied to them. A tug on one piece of string leading to the tangled mass in the hole can dislodge the entire plug, and suddenly you have real losses that are completely unrelated to the strings. The whole dike, representing the framework of life and the lands behind the dike protected by it might be lost in the wash. Your social system may not be able to afford the repairs.

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Use of Derivatives?

Mainly, derivatives are used to reduce risk for a single entity.

Derivatives can be rested upon or underwritten by all sorts of potential (underlying) assets for payoff arrangements. (This has the effect of hiding much of the liability) The payoff agreements are "contracts," and they assume a life of their own when they come to the market and are traded. The derivative contracts can be underlain by assets such as financial (currency) exchange rates, interest rates, commodities, stock and bond equities, or even indexes, such as Dow Jones stock market numbers, or the government numbers such as the (CPI) consumer price index, housing starts, weather developments, rainfall amounts, temperatures and crop production, or when the ice melts on a river. Derivatives are wide open free market gambling bets in a sense -- where people are willing to attach assets or property to conditions-- usually conditions that can't be manipulated easily by anyone so there is a sense of gambling fairness and the ratio of pay-off can be high relative to risk.

Perhaps you could tender your bet on how many cosmologically distant Gamma Ray Bursts, say, that would be detected by the SWIFT satellite in the entire month, 30 days, of June 2008. And hang some kind of asset on the accuracy of your bet as a contract. Then you have to sell the contract or get interested or non-interested parties to take your bet. Derivatives can pay-off or collapse easily -- and if the time condition attached passes and no action occurs that risk hedge is over. Your asset is as "secure" as it was when you started the process. However, in a down-linked cascade. . .

The two fields of derivative trading are Over The Counter (OTC) and Exchange Traded Derivatives (ETD's)

Over The Counter, OTC derivatives are contracts privately negotiated between two groups or entities without any other intermediary involvement or skim. These consist of swaps, forward rate agreements, and complex "exotic options" and are almost always traded over the counter. The OTC derivatives market is globe girdling, diaphanous, and astronomically enormous. Much of the detail is hidden. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the total outstanding notional amount is USD 516 trillion (as of June 2007).

Image: Wikipedia, the Chicago Board of Trade

Exchange Traded Derivatives (ETD's)

ETD's are specialized financial instruments, broad in their variety. They are usually brokered on organized "Exchanges" which serve as intermediary entities, and extract a service portion for their intermediary role. These entities are businesses such as the Korea Exchange (carries the KOSPI Index Futures & Options),Eurex (carries a wide range of European financial products; i.e., (interest rate & index products), and CME Group (Created from 2007 merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade).

Wikipedia: "According to BIS, the combined turnover in the world's derivatives exchanges totaled USD 344 trillion during Q4 2005. Some types of derivative instruments also may trade on traditional exchanges. For instance, hybrid instruments such as convertible bonds and/or convertible preferred may be listed on stock or bond exchanges. Also, warrants (or "rights") may be listed on equity exchanges. Performance Rights, Cash xPRTs(tm) and various other instruments that essentially consist of a complex set of options bundled into a simple package are routinely listed on equity exchanges. Like other derivatives, these publicly traded derivatives provide investors access to risk/reward and volatility characteristics that, while related to an underlying commodity, nonetheless are distinctive." (Credit: Wikipedia)

see: http://www.fow.com/
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Oh, you don't mind that you are bailing out the Wall Streeters, and the investment banks and bankers that are taking your home values value as a percentage of the biggest investment you have? Your home? Your Castle? The "market" for real estate seems a likely way to pay for the borrowing of money from the people. You know, YOU pay for the Iraq War? No, G Bush doesn't pay for the war; you do by the devaluation of your home. By the republican mortgage on your children's future.

Except this looks like it has some unusual problems. People owning their own Castles, almost. (Below you will see that the "Real Estate" on the entire planet Earth is only valued at $75 trillion dollars -- which might show you the lack of intelligence, and the absolute and ignorant disconnect at play in these folks and their concept of the human territorial imperative and the real world!)

These Wall Streeter's are speculators at the lowest level of humanity (right at the scum level) , rightly identified by Christ around 2008 years back. And these wall streeters or fund managers have mostly shipped your job elsewhere, and ask you now to bail them out the likes of Bill Gross -- who clearly sees nothing wrong in asking for the Fed to bailout Pimco?

Image:Wikipedia, Blockaded NYSE April 2004 dogs, police, M-16s Notice the "front" the hint of Greek power in the architecture?

How much is the world worth? Sometimes I think wall streeters would option or sell the Earth or parts of it, to an intelligent extraterrestrial (alien) species simply to back up their leveraged derivatives and options. What would the payment plan comprise? Would the assets include all life on Earth? Would they incorporate a "vacate" clause? The planetary population needs to reach ZPG. And who should vacate what? Yeah. It is time for "change," but it has to be real change to save the world from capitalism and the concepts of value as potential profit. The system is corrupt in concept. That is, it is fundamentally flawed, and it has just about destroyed the planet for the life with which we share it.

Granted. There are absolute limits to growth, and sustainable growth in a profit driven world is just another chimera. (It does not look good for Wall Street, or the fundamentally flawed ideas that "imitate" a vibrant adaptable organism -- does it? Imitation of life? Zombies? (I did not say Xombies.))

Power?

The "power" of the Congress, the Fed, and the Bush administration to do the world's work was well-characterized by Lou Dobbs on April 3, 2008.

"Tonight, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Bush administration [are] strongly defending that $30-billion bailout of Wall Street, but offer[ing] nothing to middle class families in danger of losing their homes, sounds like business as usual in our nation's capital."
-- Lou Dobbs
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Paul B Farrell authors some interesting points in his blog about "derivatives" March 10, 2008.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/derivatives-new-ticking-time-bomb/story.aspx?guid=%7BB9E54A5D-4796-4D0D-AC9E-D9124B59D436%7D

He speaks about what Warren Buffett and Bill Gross of Pimco are warning on the really dangerous situation we have looming like global warming extinctions right ahead of us. Bill Gross is still hawking the wrong advice, and still looking for a bailout. Municipals?

Let's talk realities here, even if they are alternate shimmering realities.

Do You think these are "real" values?

-- Proposed U.S. federal budget is $3 trillion

U.S. government's maximum legal debt is $9 trillion

U.S. money supply is about $15 trillion

$15 trillion / 303,795,007 = $49,375.40 as your share of the US money supply. Have you got yours?

U.S. annual gross domestic product is about $15 trillion
$15 trillion/304 million people(Americans) = $49,342

Is your "output" nearly $50,000 yearly?

U.S. mutual fund companies manage about $12 trillion

World's GDPs for all nations is approximately $66 trillion
(This is a CIA estimate, not Farrell's, his was $50 trillion.)

$66 trillion/6.7 Billion people = $9,851
Hmm? Looks like there are some sever disparities and just making more $ is not going to change the destiny of those who do not share this largess, does it now? Do we need to limit people or money?

Unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits $50 trillion to $65 trillion
(Do sick and old Americans need the entire world's output for medication?)

Ah, come on! Big pharma is telling a little tale here! Don't bite.

Total value of the world's "real estate" is estimated at about $75 trillion, Farrell writes.

(This is one of the big flaws in the entire system of economic ideas -- who "owns" your footrest, or where you stand? Is your cave better than my cave? How about your hut compared to my hovel? What is this ownership of real estate? Territorial imperative? Let's get real? This kind of evaluation points to one of the fundamental flaws in the humans financial farce. Real Estate Market "Corrections?" What an insane situation. And what if a big bad wind huffs and puffs and blows your hovel away, or sucks up a storm surge and floods your hut? (Katrina) You must still pay your monthly mortgage and hope the insurer doesn't belly-up. Of course, them insure guys got pull with the law guys -- and might send you to some neighborhood limitations adjustments so the whole block is degraded 40% to 50% when it comes to Act of God risk recovery. Did you sign-in to that? It was down there in the "fine,fine,fine" print one page you initialed. Like Big Carbon had nothing to do with any of this, but God did? So you are out? )

Total value of world's stock and bond markets is more than $100 trillion
(How can [i]anything in bonds or stocks be of more value than the Earth's green hills, blue oceans and once abundant balanced life? Do you suppose there are problems with a concept like this? I do.)

BIS valuation of world's derivatives back in 2002 was about $100 trillion

What happened between 2002 and 2007?

BIS 2007 valuation of the world's derivatives was $516 trillion

Farrell addresses derivatives and the 2%. I think he is light on the scale. I think we are near a $700 trillion derivative value, counting everything on the black market. These are economic quantities outside of regulations, far outside of laws, and far beyond taxes. To play in this market, you have to scam and skim and hide. Many diverse uncertain complex instruments and things play in these shadow lands.

But the really HOT TIP! you can take to the "bank," is the surest way to "make" money! Let the American Treasury "print" or mint all you need; All you need. That is the easiest way to "make" money. Does anyone see illusions here?

It is hard for most of us to understand the immense scale of the financial quagmire the banking cartels and the Fed have contrived for us, and the rest of the world. There are hints of the 516 Trillion Dollar economy, having been just the shadows, with another $344 trillion in a speculator's commodities fantasy. The potential destruction and potential salvation comes from the amount totally invisible to the BIS or any central bank or government oversight.

The international banking community is at the base of this, of course, and elsewhere I have pointed at the old bloodline banks. This is an "illusion group," trying to stay in shadows and myth and actually thinks it controls everything on Earth. That is a joke of planetary proportion. And an ironic illusion.

But if you need these illusions, they should be grandiose. It is the neurotics, to psychotics "move up." Build the illusion, then move in.

516 trillion dollars. Truly astronomical quantities of money.

Because of nearly astronomical immensity of the $516 Trillion, I try to find alternative methods of relating how immense the quantities are when compared to things people might be familiar with..

The Gross World Product was estimated by the CIA as roughly 67 trillion dollars in about 2005. That is the value of of the world's entire economic output as estimated by the intelligence community. (Of course! it is speculative -- and Intelligence? that too.) But world wide "derivatives" are paper-valued at between 500 and 700 trillion dollars, with $516.407 Trillion recorded by reporting banks and members of the worldwide economic consortium in June 2007. That is where a lot of paper value has dried up, too. But let's compare pennies. All the world's paper value $516.407 x 1012, would yield 51.6407 quadrillion pennies.

Image:Wikipedia, Reverse side of the US one Cent coin. Lincoln Memorial and Statue

According to the US MINT page:
http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/?action=coin_specifications

Pennies are 2.5% Copper, and 97.5% zinc. The total weight of this mixture of metals for a single coin is 2.500 grams, or 1 US penny weight. Now if you could stack pennies, each 1.55 mm thick as tall as a meter, it would amount to $6.45 (645 pennies would be 0.16 penny too short or actually 999.75 millimeters tall. The value of the metal itself in a penny in February 2008 was 6/tenths of a cent.($0.00600) for a "face" monetary value of 1/100th of a dollar ($0.01)

From Wikipedia: As of March 16, 2008, the price of pre-1982 US cent pennies which weigh 3.1 grams are 2.576016 us cents which is a 157.6016% above face value metal content at market and the post-1982 us cent pennies which weigh 2.5 grams are 0.683893 US cents in metal content which is 68.3893% metal content of face value which is not over face value. As each US nickel is 7.310391 us cents in metal content and is 46.20782% metal content at market over face value. All pre-1982 US 1-cent pennies and all US 5-cent nickels are worth more in metal content than face value.

Wikipedia:"According to the US Mint, the costs of producing and shipping one-cent (penny) and 5-cent (nickel) coins during fiscal year 2007 are $0.0167 per penny and $0.0953 per nickel. Canada switched to making iron based coins in the year 2000, where the face value of coins is above the metal content of the coins. The US is in line to change the metal composition of the US pennies and US nickels if not all US metal coinage at a coming future date."

But a stack of 51.6 quadrillion pennies would be all the imagined "money" in the world and then some! So how tall is a stack of 51.6x 1015 1.55 mm thick pennies?

Here are some money stacks!

Stacks of pennies, each 1.55 mm thick and exactly 3/4 inch (19.05 mm) in diameter.

$0.0645 pennies per centimeter (6 pennies stacked are not quite a cm tall)

$0.16387 pennies per inch (16 pennies almost make an inch tall stack, try it!)

$6.45 per meter (well, it would be 1/4 of a millimeter short, at 999.75 millimeters)

$6,451.61 per kilometer

$64,516.12 per ten kilometers.

$6,451,612,903.22 per million kilometers. (Moon is 360,000 to 405,000km)

Now, the stack of pennies equivalent to $516 trillion in "derivative values" which is what the "derivative world economy" operates on, is a tall, tall unstackable stack of pennies! Some of you may recall that it takes 100 pennies to make a dollar! So, at 1.55 mm thick each, how tall is a stack of pennies of $516 trillion value? That is 51.6 quadrillion pennies. (51.6 x 1015 pennies.)

51.6407 quadrillion pennies, each 1.55 mm thick, stacked flat, reach a the height of:

80,043,085,000 kilometers -- 80 billion km!
49,736,362,630.6 miles -------49.74 Billion miles!

This may seem trivial, but it isn't! Read on! This is a distance light travels in just over 74.16 hours So it would take about 3 days 5 hours 24 minutes 47 seconds for light to climb a penny stack that tall.

The stack of pennies would weigh 129 billion tons. Now since 97.5% of a modern penny is zinc with a density of 7.14 and 2.5% is copper's density of 8.92, I rough out a density of 7.18 for a penny, therefore, yielding a volume of 17,966,573,816.15 cubic meters of penny metal.

The size of such a block of penny metal would be a cube 2,619.12 meters tall, wide, and deep.

A cube of penny metal 8,592.89 feet tall, wide, and deep.

To cover a bank run on pennies! Well, to make pennies, have we even got enough copper and zinc?

It turns out we can't even find enough zinc Or copper to make 51.6 quadrillion pennies.

If we minted pennies like mad how many derivatives could we cover?

In 2006 total world reserves of zinc are 460,000,000 tons and recoverable copper reserves are 470,000,000 tons. That is all there is we can get to near the surface, mine able.

460,000,000 tons
[u]470,000,000[u] tons copper
930,000,000 tons total

129 billion tons / 930,000,000 tons = 138.7 times. So we need to have 138.7 more times copper or zinc, or we could change the amount of copper or zinc and mix with what? Iron? Like Canada?

Forget the ratio of copper and zinc -- how many pennies could we make out of 930 Million tons of penny material no matter how we mixed it? 930 million tons at 2.5 grams per penny makes $3.72 trillion dollars -- in pennies. Far short of the $516 trillion dollars in derivatives.

Image: Wikipedia, Front side, "obverse" side of one dollar bill.

Visit this site for a larger look: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/United_States_one_dollar_bill%2C_obverse.jpg

You should not get bent out of shape here. A dollar bill weighs "about" 0.98296 grams, in a dry climate. Gee. That is nearly a gram. If it is "dirty" money or "bloody" money it could come in heavier or lighter, and if it is "old" money it might lighten-up with age, be worn, flaked, chewed by use.

Wickipedia: "Modern U.S. currency, regardless of denomination, is 2.61 inches (66.3 mm) wide, 6.14 inches (156 mm) long, and 0.0043 inches (0.109 mm) thick. A single bill weighs about one gram and costs approximately 4.2 cents for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce.. In September 2004, it was estimated that if all the gold held by the U.S. government (261.7 million ounces = 8 140 Mg) were again required to back the circulating U.S. currency ($733,170,953,704), gold would need to be valued at $2,800/ounce (90 $/g)."

You can put any denomination on a paper platform, and they are all 0.109 mm or 0.0043in thick, and they all weigh a gram or so. Since each bill weighs a gram, $1,000,000 weighs a metric ton.

One million bucks is a metric ton of money. But if you stacked a million bucks tightly and flat how tall would a stack of Ones be?

$1,000,000 in Ones x 0.109 mm = 109,000 mm = a stack 109 meters tall. Taller than a football playing field is long.

But scaling derivatives in paper, is another story. For the $516 trillion dollars even paper money. . .stacks pretty high.

$516,407,000,000,000 in Ones = 516,407,000 metric tons, if stacked tightly = 56,288,363 km tall

$516,407,000,000,000 in Hundreds=5,164,070 metric tons, tightly stacked = 562,883.63 km tall

$516,407,000,000,000 in Thousands = 516,407 metric tons, tightly stacked = 56,288.363 km tall

$516,407,000,000,000 in $10,000 bills= 51,640.7 metric tons, tightly stacked=5,628.8663 km tall

And finally! The Million Dollar bills! They weight 516.407 metric tons, stacked =56.288663 km tall.

That is how a lot of money stacks up.

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National Debt
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