Friday, June 24

Money: apples vs. oranges

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply, almost 2 trillion dollars of currency existed on 4 Nov 2009. compared to less than 1 trillion existing in 2007.  And the corresponded to 8.36 trillion in savings (Nov 2009) compared to 7.41 trillion in savings in 2007.  http://www.investopedia.com/articles/08/fight-recession.asp has some perspective on this issue.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_requirement, "As of 2006 the required reserve ratio in the United States was 10% on transaction deposits and zero on time deposits and all other deposits."

There is apparently a more comprehensive measure of how much money exists (M3), but we no longer use it.  That 0 required reserve ratio on various classes of deposits might be the federal reserve considers M3 to be uninformative.  (But I am not certain that having that kind of money being treated as "meaningless" is a good thing for our economy.)

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt, the U.S. federal debt was 14.32 trillion on May 6, 2011.  Projecting backwards, this would have been about 12.62 in 2010 (because the debt increased by 1.7 trillion in 2010) and 10.72 in 2009 (because the debt increased by 1.9 trillion in 2009).

But the real fun begins at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#Credit_easing

I am still searching to find out how we quantify issues such as death and bankruptcy (where savings and loans lose traction).

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