Global debt hit a milestone recently. If you add up the debt of all of the countries on Earth, you end up with a stunning $91 trillion. More than a third of that comes from one country: the United States.
This nation’s gross cumulative debt has hit $35 trillion — a number so large, the International Monetary Fund warns that it’s putting the entire global economy at risk.
But it’s hard to even imagine what the number 35 trillion looks like, much less 91 trillion. So, I decided to employ a time-honored journalistic device: break the number down to make it easier to visualize.
So, say you had 35 trillion actual dollar bills, and you put them end to end, starting from Earth. How far up would they reach? Like, maybe, the moon?
As it turns out, the moon is not even close. It only takes about 2.5 billion bills to get to the moon. It’s no wonder the IMF is worried: U.S. debt has…
