The US debt put in perspective...

I don't know where the original English version came from (thanks Ray!), but it confirms that a picture is better than 1000 words.

A particularly explicit demonstration...: people prone to vertigo, refrain.

One Hundred Dollars 

$100 - The world's most counterfeit bill. Makes the world go round. 

Ten Thousand Dollars

$10,000 - Suffisant pour s'offrir de belles vacances ou s'acheter une voiture d'occasion. Environ une année de travail pour l'être humain moyen sur Terre.

Un Million de Dollars

$1,000,000 - The pile is smaller than you thought, right? Yet, it's equivalent to 92 years of work for the average human being on Earth.

One Hundred Million Dollars

$100,000,000 - Enough to live the good life. Fits well on an ISO or military standard pallet.

One Billion Dollars

$1,000,000,000 - Vous aurez besoin d'aide pour dévaliser la banque. A partir de là, ça devient sérieux!

Un Trillion de Dollars

$1,000,000,000,000

When the U.S. government talks about a 1.7 trillion dollar deficit, that's the amount of cash the U.S. government borrowed in 2010 in order to run.

Keep in mind that this is double pallets of $100 million each, full of $100 bills. You'll need a lot of trucks to move those volumes.

If you had spent $1 million a day since the day Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spent $1 trillion today...but about $700 million - the amount the banks received during the bailout.

Compare $1,000,000,000,000 (one Trillion Dollars) with an American soccer stadium and a European soccer stadium. 

Look at the Boeing 747-400 transcontinental plane lurking on the right. Until recently, it was the largest passenger plane in the world.

15 Trillion Dollars

$15,000,000,000,000 - A moins que le gouvernement des Etats-Unis n'accepte le budget, la dette nationale US national debat (credit) atteindra 15 trillions d'ici Noël 2011.

La Statue de la Liberté semble assez inquiète, alors que la dette nationale des Etats-Unis dépasse de 20% le PIB (Produit Intérieur Brut) combiné de l'ensemble du monde. En 2011, la Dette Nationale des Etats-Unis excédera les 100% du PIB, et entrera dans le club des nations taux de dette/PIB de plus de 100%+ dont font partie certaines nations européennes (nations en faillite).

114.5 Trillions de Dollars

$114,500,000,000,000. - U.S. debt with no cover.

On the right you can see a pillar of $100 bills that dwarfs the WTC and the Empire State Building in height - two of the tallest buildings in the world until a few years ago. If you look closely, you can see the Statue of Liberty. 

The huge $114.5 trillion skyscraper is the amount of money the U.S. government knows it needs to fund Medicare, the Medicare Prescription Drug Program, Social Security, military and government pensions. This is the money the U.S. government is short to pay all its bills. 

If you live in the United States, it is also your personal credit bill; you, like everyone else, are responsible for paying off this debt. The citizens of the United States created the government to serve them, and that is what the government has done by serving the people. 

The uncovered debt is calculated on the basis of tax and financial inflows, as well as future demographic changes in the U.S. population.

Note: In the 114.5T image above, the image the size of the base of the money pile is half a Trillion, not 1 Trillion as in the 15 Trillion image.  The height is double. This was done to better match the base of the Empire State and the WTC. 

Source: Federal Reserve & www.USdebtclock.org. Visit this site to see the debt in real time and get a better idea of these astronomical numbers.