It may help to understand how much money Congress just appropriated to bail out the banks if we calculate how many semi-trucks it would take to carry $700,000,000,000.
The dimensionsof a 40-foot semi-trailer are approximately
40' x 10' x 8'
for a total of 3200 cubic feet.
If you make a stack of a hundred $100 bills, it will be approximately 1.5 inches high and add up to $10,000. 8 stacks will be a foot high, and in a cubic foot you can pack approximately 2 stacks length-wise, 4 stacks across, 8 stacks high for a total of 64 stacks.
64 x $10,000 = $640,000 in a cubic foot of $100 bills.
So 1000 cubic feet of $100 bills will add up to
1000 x $640,000 = $640,000,000
That's still only 640 million dollars, so to contain 640 billion dollars you need...
1,000,000 cubic feet of $100 bills.
Each semi-truck can carry 3200 cubic feet of cargo, so to carry 1,000,000 cubic feet of $100 bills, you need
1,000,000 / 3200 = 312.
You still have to add in another $60,000,000,000 to arrive at the total bail-out of $700,000,000,000, and for that you need 30 more semi-trucks...
But even if 300 semi-trucks full of $100 bills isn't quite enough to carry $700,000,000,000, it still gives you a ball-park idea of how much money Congress just gave the banks.
Line up 300 semi-trucks bumper-to-bumper, and you get a caravan of solid money more than three miles long!