Portfolio.com has a neat interactive feature, “The Green Miles,” by Jocelyn Hanamirian,that shows you what the government’s debt would look like if it were stretched bill by bill across the solar system.

The Bear Stearns buy-out, at $29 billion, for example, takes us just past the moon.
The 2009 federal budget deficit, at $1.2 trillion, takes us past the sun.