I have often wondered what goes on in the homes of the super-rich after the sun goes down and all of the doors and windows are locked. I strongly suspect that the snow shovels come out and the rich people start stirring through their money to keep it from moldering. Just think about some of the figures they throw about on the evening news. They never say one billion, four hundred million. It is one point four billion, as if the four hundred million is just tacked on as an afterthought. To most of us, these numbers seem abstract and difficult to visualize. We have heard a lot recently about bailouts, executive bonuses, and schemes that run into the billions. With gold at eight hundred dollars per ounce, one billion dollars in gold weighs 38.9 tons. If you had one billion dollars in one hundred dollar bills – new money that would lay down flat like the pages of an unopened book – it would fill a cube 7.36 feet on each side. If you decided to ship it to your less fortunate relatives in those 1.5 cubic foot moving boxes, you would need 266 of them to hold your billion. A million dollars weighs 22 pounds, while one billion tips the scales at 22,000 pounds. If you loaded the 17.5 billion auto bailout in the back of pickup trucks, it would require over twenty of them if you stacked the money to the top of the cab. A lot of it would blow out as you traveled down the highway, but who cares. A lot of it is going to blow out as it passes through Washington anyway.