Here's What $257 Billion Could Get Apple

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Like Jay Z, Apple is heavy roll, heavy dough. The tech giant reported this week that its cash stockpile grew to a staggering $256.8 billion at the end of the first quarter, up from $233 billion a year earlier. Apple isn't alone in accumulating wealth abroad. “Companies have been accumulating cash over many years,” Smith School professor David Kass tells The Washington Post this week. "The perverse disincentives of our current corporate tax system are discouraging corporations from bringing back international profits to invest in the U.S.”

Republicans and Democrats have been pushing for a lower corporate tax rate or a tax holiday that would encourage companies to repatriate money. They say it would pull hundreds of billions of dollars back to the U.S. for capital investment or dividend payments. Now, it's true that Apple has a long, solid history of building its own innovations, rather than acquiring them. But, let's just say these Cupertino quarter-trillionaires wanted to go on a spending spree, here are some of the things they could buy...