10 things Apple could buy with its cash stockpile

Apple revealed its latest business results yesterday, and though profits were down 22 percent, they were better than many analysts expected. The iPhone is still a top seller and the iPad too. Also among Apple’s positive attributes? All the money it has stockpiled — some $146 billion in cash and securities that could be freed up at the drop of a hat.

Business news site Quartz reports that’s enough to pay off all the debt of Detroit eight times over. Apple, of course, has no plans to do so. But it got us thinking, what else could Apple buy?

• Google Glass for every citizen of Germany, Egypt or The Phillippines

• One year’s worth of Hungary’s entire economic output

• Enough money to take Dell private — at Michael Dell’s current offer price — six times

• Fill the hole made by the sequester for one year

• 10 Mark Zuckerbergs

• Bill Gates plus Warren Buffett plus George Soros

• All of Staten Island’s real estate in 2010

• The entire endowment of Harvard, Princeton and Yale put together

• The cost of treating cancer in the U.S. for 1 year and 10 months

• Enough to cover the damage from Superstorm Sandy almost three times over