What does a trillion dollars look like?

One of the most impressive public buildings in any country has to be the central bank. In the United States the central bank, known as the Federal Reserve, is headquartered in Washington, DC but there are 12 regional reserve banks. The amount of money at any one of these facilities is astonishing. In 2009 it was estimated that the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York City (the largest in the system) held $957,685,000,000 in reserve cash. This is almost a trillion dollars. To give you an idea of how much money is being kept at this facility we’ll take a look at the following illustration (which I found at PTM.org). Here we go…

This is your typical $100 dollar bill….
Here’s $10,000…
$1,000,000… (it can fit in your gym-bag)
$100,000,000…
$1,000,000,000…
and finally $1,000,000,000,000. (The little red dot to the left of the pile is a human being)