Hello, yesterday, the amount of debt of France came out, which is over 2000 billion euros, actually the total external debt is 4542 billion euros. For the USA, the amout is almost 18 000 billion dollars. Well, that's a lot of money, I know that the amount has already been compared to other amounts or equivalently in VOLUME of the debt. I could not resist to compute that : For France the total volume of the debt is 5677500 cubic meters in coins of 1 euro. For USA, in quarters : a perfact cube of 414 meters side filled with 25 cents. In pennies (us one cent), the volume is roughly 1 cubic KILOMETER or 981960611 cubic meters. The calculation I used is a shortcut, I simply pile the coins in a square grid which is (I believe) the same amount of space than a random pile of coins, on this I am certain that some of the members can say if this rough model is accurate. For France it is the equivalent of 2 times the pyramid of Gizeh + about 500000 cubic meters. or 1 pyramid + 2 times the volume of the Eiffel Tower in 1 euro coins. The pyramid of Gizeh is about 2.6 million cubic meters and the Eiffel tower about 1.7 million cubic meters (enclosed space) which is by the way lightier than the enclosed air, the Eiffel tower is lightier than air (enclosed volume). I like that idea of 1 cubic kilometer of debt for the usa. Here are some references. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_%28United_States_coin%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_euro_coin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt Best regards, Simon Plouffe