After hearing Tuesday’s news that — only a year after an unprecedented federal bailout of the banking industry — Wall Street banks had rewarded their executives with over $20 billion in bonuses in 2009, we did a quick look around to see what else is worth that much cheddar.

Among other things, $20 billion is…

• The size of Jamaica’s annual Gross Domestic Product

• Greater than the combined annual revenue of the NFL, NHL, MLB and NBA

• Enough to make someone the 7th wealthiest person on the planet

• Enough to cover 2.5 months of the proposed White House Health Care Plan

• According to Forbes, the combined wealth of Richie Rich and Tony “Iron Man” Stark

• The estimated total dollar amount lost by investors in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme

• Enough to give $31,000 to every person in North Dakota

• Three times the total cost (including infrastructure improvements) of putting on the 2010 Winter Olympics

• Twice what Vancouver stands to earn from hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics

• 8x the current global box-office receipts for Avatar

• Almost double Haiti’s GDP and equal to the combined GDPs of the World Bank’s bottom 20 nations

• 10x the estimated cost of the Toyota recall

• The cost of the Command/Service Module used in the Apollo Moon landing mission

• 25x the combined total annual income of the world’s top 20 athletes (including endorsements)

• $5 billion less than Harvard’s total endowment

• 20x the value of the University of Delaware’s endowment

• 12X what Google paid to acquire YouTube

• 3x the amount of money lost gambling on the Las Vegas Strip in 2009

We encourage you to keep this list running in the comments!

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