We hear money has been spirited away by the billions in Iraq. Leading some to wonder what that amount of cash would look like in the tangible sense. For example, would a billion dollars be visible from Google Earth?

Last week in Guam, Americans were offered an opportunity to see 71.7 tons of money go up in smoke. By some accounts, “The Spirit of Kansas” was a 2.5 billion dollar plane, others say the B-2 bomber costs 1.2 billion dollars. Hopefully the insurance adjusters will sort it out. The crash represented three to six times more than the Hubble lens, or a solid fraction of our armaments budget.