Here's a semi-cute story that shows more than a bit of financial illiteracy; Apple has more cash on hand that the US government does. The reason that that is a illiterate statement is that you're comparing the Fed's checking account to Apples checking and short-term savings account.
That's because the first line on a big-company's balance sheet is typically cash and marketable securities; companies often keep only what they need in the very short term in checking and keep the rainy-day money in T-bills, CDs and other short-term investments. Even there, you have to include 12 billion in cash, 16 billion in short-term investments and 48 billion in long term investments to get to the stated 76 billion for Apple. Conversely, the Treasury's checking account has a mere 74 billion, but that's six times what Apple has in its checking accounts.
If we used that same standard with Uncle Sam, all the TARP investments would count towards their account, as would the stock in "Government Motors" and Chrysler. Sadly, they'd have Apple easily beat if you used the same metrics. Making the government a stockholder in a company leads to some odd conflicts of interest, which is why that's been done sparingly over the years.
Outside of those oddities, Uncle Sam doesn't do much saving; if it does run a surplus for a stretch, it will issue less new T-bills than otherwise. Thus, today's Apple piece is comparing apples and lemons.
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