How the world's richest nation and the most valuable tech company stack up
Souces: Apple Inc., U.S. Treasury Daily Report
Unless the debt ceiling is raised by Tuesday Aug. 2, the White House keeps reminding us, the U.S. government will no longer be able to pay its bills.
But the U.S. Treasury is already running low. Its closing balance as of Wednesday, July 27, was $73.768 billion.
To put that in perspective, Apple (AAPL) most recent earning statement shows that it was holding $76.156 billion in cash and marketable securities as of June 25.
Since Apple takes in more money than it spends and the U.S. government does the opposite, the company by now has considerably more cash on hand than Uncle Sam.
Not that Apple could bail us out. At the rate the U.S. spends money -- more than $10 billion a day -- Apple's cash wouldn't last two weeks.
Via The Atlantic.
Below: Snapshots of the relevant balance sheets.
Apple Form 10-Q fiscal Q3 2011
U.S. Treasury
Steve Jobs, goes the old joke at Apple, is surrounded by a reality distortion field; get too close and you might believe what he's saying. Apple has made believers out of millions of customers -- and made a lot of investors rich -- but Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate -- since 1982.
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