Agreed. This visualization is only interesting to someone obsessed with the physical size of paper currency. Planet Money recently did a nice job of comparing

Agreed. This visualization is only interesting to someone obsessed with the physical size of paper currency. Planet Money recently did a nice job of comparing the current U.S. debt level and the historic debt levels of other countries to GDP, and how that impacted their economic fate: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/20/138518262/the-tuesday-podcast-how-much-debt-is-too-much http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/20/138518262/the-tues...