$1,200,000,000,000.00

That’s $1.2 trillion. The expected size of the deficit for 2009.

The mind boggles. I can’t even comprehend that many zeros.

What could you as an individual do with $1,200,000,000,000.00?

You could buy 600,000,000,000 gallons of gas at $2 per gallon. That’s too big to deal with too.

You could buy 240,000,000,000 McMeals at $5 each.

You could buy 30,000,000 cars at $40,000 each.

You could buy 6,000,000 houses at $200,000 each.

The most expensive car in the world is the Bugatti Veyron at $1,192,057. You could buy 1,006,663 of them.

You could buy 400,000 30-second Super Bowl XLIII spots at $3,000,000 each. Of course, that’s nearly 139 days worth of continuous ads, and the Super Bowl only lasts about 4 hours.

The purchase price for Alaska was $7,200,000 in 1867. You could have bought 166,667 Alaskas.

The purchase price for the Louisiana Territory was $15,000,000 in 1803. You could have bought 80,000 Louisianas.

The Hope Diamond has an estimated value of $300,000,000-$350,000,000. I’ll use $300,000,000 to simplify the math. At that price you could buy 4,000 Hope Diamonds.

The most valuable sports franchise in the United States is the Dallas Cowboys, worth an estimated $1,612,000,000. You could buy the Dallas Cowboys 744 times.

The B-2 bomber cost $2,100,000,000. The United States built 21 of them. You could build 571.

The U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier cost around $5,100,000,000. You could buy 235 of them.

If you won $1.2 trillion in the lottery and paid 40% taxes on it and had the payments spread out over 25 years, you’d get $28,800,000,000 every year.

Bill Gates net worth is in the $57,000,000,000 range. You’d be over 21 times richer than Bill Gates. Hey, that’s an idea. Seize all the assets of the Forbes 400. That’d pay off that deficit and then some. I’m kidding, of course.