How Much!!?!! Ways to think about our debt

The Congressional Budget Office projects the total budget deficit in fiscal 2011 at about $1.4 trillion.

"The net worth of Bill Gates, roughly around $56 billion, could only cover the deficit for 15 days," said Jason Peuquet, a policy analyst with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "The net worth of Warren Buffet, roughly around $50 billion, could only cover the deficit for 13 days."

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President Ronald Reagan once famously said that a stack of $1,000 bills equivalent to the U.S. government's debt would be about 67 miles high.
That was 1981. Since then, the national debt has climbed to $14.3 trillion. In $1,000 bills, it would now be more than 900 miles tall.

Above two quotes linked here:
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/news/reuters/finance_business/2011/May/19/pile_of_debt_would_stretch_beyond_stratosphere.html

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At the end of fiscal 2008, which came on September 30 of last year, the American national debt stood at $9.6 trillion. That sum is, perhaps, quite beyond the imagining of most people. It is, after all, 250 million times the average per capita income. Even the total fortunes of the entire Forbes 400 list add up to less than 15 percent of it. To use a journalistic measure that dates back to the late 18th century—when the British national debt had become a major political issue in that country—if you laid 9.6 trillion silver dollars end to end, they would reach to the sun and back, with enough left over to wrap around the Earth more than 1,700 times.

link: John Steele Gordon
http://www.american.com/archive/2009/september/debt-be-not-proud-the-sorry-tale-of-america2019s-out-of-control-spending