Get that $1 trillion look

Does anybody know what $1 trillion looks like? That's what housing analyst Dennis Smith of Home Builders Research asked 300 people at his 2009 Housing Outlook in reference to the government bailout package. Nobody raised their hand.

Smith said he called his economist friend, Bob Potts, at UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research, who told him to think of it this way: If you had a thousand dollars and multiplied it by a thousand, you'd have $1 million; if you multiplied that by another thousand, you'd have $1 billion; and if you multiplied that yet again by a thousand, you'd have $1 trillion.

"It's got 12 zeros," Smith said. If you stacked it by thousand-dollar bills, $1 million would be four inches in height. "I measured it last night," he quipped.

If the stack went to $1 billion, it would be 358 feet. And for $1 trillion, it would be 457 feet. The bills could be laid end to end from Las Vegas to Kingman, 90 miles away, Smith said.