I don't agree with the objects used to signify scale. Anything can look really big (or small) depending on what you compare it to.
Maybe better:
Amount of money in $100 bills that flows through stock market in a day/week/month.
Amount of money spent by US in a year
Amount of money made by small business in a year.
Jesus, Maria y Jose! Even if they were off a building or two, that's just scary. Why does anyone lend us money? We should start making countries pay when we go to war.
Jesus, Maria y Jose! Even if they were off a building or two, that's just scary. Why does anyone lend us money? We should start making countries pay when we go to war.
Creditors lend us money because they aren't comparing a pictorial representation of our debt in $100 bills to various NYC landmarks. They use actual financial information.
Those sort of representations are designed to elicit the type of response you just had. If it didn't elicit that sort of response, they would have picked something different to compare it to.
That is why its meaningless, other than a transitory "golly gee" moment...