Wednesday, September 16, 2009

NAMA, how much is 54 billion euro?

Nama, the Irish governemts agency to take on bad loans, is paying 54 billion euro to buy property. How much money is that? There is a great visualisation here about how much is a trillion.

So lets picture Croke Park. Its pitch is 144.5 m x 88m. That is much bigger then a soccer or rugby pitch. A 20 euro note is 133 × 72 milimiters. So to pave Croke Park pitch with 20 euro notes requires. So that is 1087 notes long 1223 wide or 1,329,401 notes are needed to pave croke park pitch in 20 euro notes. So that is roughly 2 layers of 20 euro notes being 54 million and paving it two notes deep. A billion is a thousand million so 54 billion is 1000 times this. So 54 billion is paving Croke Park in 20 euro notes 2000 deep.

So if your looking at the game on Sunday imagine there is a 20,000 euro pile of cash on the pitch that you now owe. That is 54 billion divided among the people who pay tax. So you and the person sitting next to you owe a 2000 deep 20 euro sized chunk of the Croke Park pitch.

A comment vaguely asked how much euro coin is this? "Did you know its also enough Euros placed end to end to reach the moon". According to here a 2 euro coin has
Thickness (mm): 2.20
Weight (g): 8.50

So 27 billion 2 euro coins are needed. So in weight that is 229.5 million kilos.
"The maximum gross mass for a 20 ft (6.1 m) dry cargo container is 30,480 kg" so that is 7540 containers full of 2 euro coins.

How long would the stack be? 2.2 * 27 billion millimeters = 59 400 kilometers. Or enough to go around the earth one and a half times. But less than a fifth the distance to the moon.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous11:21 AM

    Did you know its also enough Euros placed end to end to reach the moon and right back up Brian Lenihan's arse?

    ReplyDelete