Holy GDP!

Straying far from my beat, I went and wrote a foreign policy piece about the Knights Templar.

Which, naturally, got me thinking about the Vatican's economy. Here are some facts I stumbled upon:

Land use: arable land: 0%

Population: 821

Industries: printing; production of coins, medals, postage stamps; a small amount of mosaics and staff uniforms; worldwide banking and financial activities

So, how much money is the Vatican making off of all those medals and mosaics it produces? About $247 million a year in total revenues. That's about 1/10,000 the revenues of the United States, but places above quite a few countries and territories, including Burundi, which has over 10,000 times the Vatican's population and 63,250 times as much land, over a third of which is arable.