How to Imagine $1.25 Trillion

Barry Habib, from his essay featured in John Mauldin's Outside the Box:

During the past fifteen months, the Fed purchased $1.25 Trillion in MBS, which represented 80% of the mortgage market.…

Just How Much Money is $1.25 Trillion?

…. Picture a stack of $100 bills. It might surprise you to know that it only takes a stack four inches high to be worth $100,000. So $1,000,000 would be a stack of $100 bills 40 inches tall. How about a Billion? Well, you would have to stack $100 bills up to the top of the Empire State Building...twice...in order to reach a Billion. So to picture $1.25 Trillion represented by a stack of $100 bills - that stack would be 850 miles high. If you could turn that stack on its side and were able to drive alongside it, it would take you longer than 14 hours to reach the end.