The Billion Dollar-o-Gram 2009

By David McCandless, originally published by Information Is Beautiful

October 7, 2010

NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed.

Image Removed


More about this image

All the data and more billion dollar amounts: http://bit.ly/bndollar

A little context

This image arose out of frustration with media reporting of billion dollar amounts. That is, that they’re meaningless without context. But they’re continually reported as self-evident facts. 500 billion for this war. 50 billion for this pipeline. Literally mind-boggling amounts of money.

So here we’ve scraped reported figures from The New York Times, The Guardian, and other news outlets and visualized them as a treemap (?). So you can see in one place figures that would otherwise be scattered across multiple news reports.

(**Sorry it’s taken me so long to update this image from the original version. I’ve revised and updated all the figures. Sourced some new numbers. And researched new ideas suggested by visitors. Thanks all!**)

Design: David McCandless | Research: David McCandless, Matthew Sawh, Caroline Flyn, James Key, Pearl-Doughty White.

Sources: NYTimes, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC and other media reports. Data: http://bit.ly/bndollar

All content [on original website “Information is Beautiful”] Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial David McCandless 2009 (unless otherwise stated) | Contact

David McCandless

Tags: Geopolitics & Military, Politics

At the mouth of the Red Sea, the chokepoint where global crises converge

By Rachel Ainsworth, Societal Dynamics (SoDy)

Historically, the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have been a strategic region for trade and political dominance; today, we are still shaped by their influence as we remain fragilely interconnected.

September 25, 2026

Walter P. Reuther Library

Preserving labor history in the present, for the future

By Marianne Dhenin, YES! magazine

Labor activists take steps to preserve the documents and strategies they use today, so future organizers will have a practical guide.

September 8, 2026

Picket at University of Edinburgh

Rebuilding the trade union movement: ‘Dare to struggle, dare to win’

By Paul O’Connell, Red Pepper

To rebuild the trade union movement, to meaningfully defend the right to strike, and to begin a serious fightback against the imposition of the costs of capitalism’s crisis on the working class, we need to put our energy into workplace and community organising

September 7, 2026

Comments

We changed commenting systems on September 10, 2026 as part of a site-wide functionality and security upgrade. Your past comments have not disappeared, and you can still log in with your old Disqus account credentials if you wish. Contact us with any questions.

Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted