We all know that Apple is a successful company, but one metric that has everyone talking: The company is sitting on a pile of cash that’s bigger than what the U.S. government has.
Citing the latest numbers from the U.S. Treasury and comparing them to Apple’s most recent (and stunning) quarterly earnings report, the BBC and others note that the Treasury has a cash balance of $73.7 billion, and Apple’s cash reserves stand at $76.4 billion.
What will Apple do with all that dough? It’s not saying. But financial analysts speculate that it might buy Barnes & Noble or Netflix, or some strategic patents.
Apple’s cash stockpile is part of a larger trend of U.S. firms sitting on a record-setting mountains of money.
Perhaps Apple can bail us out — but its money wouldn’t last that long, as Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt points out.
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.
