Visualization of US Debt

When the numbers turn into billions and trillions, they start to lose meaning. US national debt - this is the figure. Now he is $ 19.5 trillion, and this is such a large number that it’s really hard for an ordinary person to imagine. But presenting large numbers visually in the form of diagrams and comparing with comparable values, grasping the essence is much easier.

The Money Project authors collected and visualized information about the US public debt, comparing the amount of debt with the cost of the largest American companies, oil exports from various countries - the largest exporters, as well as the cost of all stored gold, all silver mined in the world and some other values. The experts came to an interesting conclusion - even if you add up all the cash, all the stored gold, all the mined silver and all the cryptocurrency, this is enough to repay only 65% ​​of the debt.

How big is the US national debt?

• The US government debt is more than the value of the 500 largest US public companies.

The S & P 500 is a stock market index that tracks the value of the 500 largest US companies by market capitalization. It includes such giants as Apple, Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Alphabet, Facebook, Johnson & Johnson and many others. In the summer of 2016, the value of all 500 companies amounted to $ 19.1 trillion, a little less than the size of the national debt.
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• The US national debt exceeds the sum of all financial assets held by the 7 largest global investment funds.

The largest investment funds - companies such as Blackrock or Fidelity - operate with trillions of dollars of investors' assets in stocks, debt, units, ETF, etc. Even if all the assets managed by the 7 largest companies in the world are combined, the total will be $ 18.9 trillion.

• The US national debt is 25 times more than the value of all exported oil in the world in 2015.

Yes, such countries as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia receive huge money on the sale of oil throughout the world. Despite this, the size of the entire export is nothing compared to the debt. For example, if all Saudi oil were sent to pay off debt, it would take 146 years of production to pay it to the end.

• The US national debt is 155 times more than the cost of all gold mined in a year.

Gold has always symbolized money and wealth, but even all of the world's gold mining, amounting to about 3,000 tons of precious metals, would hardly affect the size of the debt. At current market prices for gold and with today's production volumes, it would take 155 years to pay the full amount.

• In fact, the national debt is more than all the world's reserves of cash, gold, silver and bitcoins combined.

If you put together every dollar, euro, yen, pound, yuan and all other currencies in banknotes and coins, all together they will be only $ 5 trillion. If we add all the gold ($ 7.7 trillion) and all silver ($ 20 billion) reserves, as well as the entire cryptocurrency ($ 11 billion), we get the sum of $ 12.73 trillion or 65% of the US national debt.