Some fun statistics.
According to the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing each bill in circulation weighs 1 gram. http://www.moneyfactory.gov/document.cfm/18/106
Every ounce contains 31.1 grams.
Every pound contains 12 troy ounces.
So if you are worth US$1 million dollars and you requested the currency in $1 dollar bills you would have 32,154 ounces or 2679 pounds of physical currency in your possession.
According to this wheel barrow for sale at Canadian Tire - it can hold 210 pounds. http://www.canadiantire.ca/
This means that US$1 million dollars would weigh approximately 13 wheel barrows if you had to transport it via $1 dollar bills. The largest currency in circulation in the US is the $100 dollar bill.
Conversely if you held $1 million dollars in gold you would have 1592 ounces of gold (1,000,000 divided by $628.20) or approximately 133 pounds of gold which would be a little more than one half of one wheel barrow.
Now the US has M3 currency in circulation of approximately US$11 trillion dollars. If we use the same $1 dollar bill calculation we would find that we have just over 100 million wheel barrels of US dollar bills - if the entire money supply was $1 dollar bills which obviously it is not. This is also one wheel barrow of US dollar bills for every 3 men, women and children in the United States.
Again it would be 1 million wheel barrows of M3 money supply if we use the $100 dollar bill as the bill in the calculation.
Here is the math.
11,000,000,000,000 (11 trillion)
Divided by 100 (for the $100 dollar bill) = 110,000,000,000 grams.
Divided by 31.1 to get the number of ounces = 3,536,977,491.96 ounces.
Divided by 12 to get the number of pounds = 294,748,124.3 pounds
Divided by 210 pounds to get the number of wheelbarrows = 1,403,562.50
Multiplied by 100 to get the number of wheelbarrows if we use the $1 bill instead of the $100 dollar bill.
Buy all the gold you can carry.
How many wheel barrows are you worth?
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