There’s an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal. The amount of actual physical money in the world is increasing very rapidly and no one knows where it is going:
The value of U.S. dollars in circulation hit about $1.7 trillion last year ($12.4 billion of it in $1 bills; $1.3 trillion of it in $100 bills) according to the U.S. Federal Reserve. That is up from $1.2 trillion in 2013.
A Federal Reserve economist, Ruth Judson, wrote in a 2017 paper that about 60% of all U.S. currency, and about 75% of $100 bills, had left the country by the end of 2016—for a total of about $900 billion in U.S. dollars kept overseas. Socking those bills away provides some protection against economic turmoil, especially in countries with a record of instability in their own financial systems, the paper said.
It isn’t just the United States. Germany, Australia, Switzerland, the ECB, and New Zealand are also cited.
Where is all of the physical cash going?
- Lots of ordinary people all over the world are holding more cash.
- A handful of big companies in various countries are keeping a lot of cash in their petty cash drawers.
- It’s mostly the Chinese. A billion Chinese who don’t trust their banking system (for good reason) and the amounts add up quickly.
- Chinese officials are planning to boogie out and are holding their ill-gotten gains in cash.
- American officials are planning to boogie out and are holding their ill-gotten gains in cash.
- The underground cash economy is growing extremely rapidly.
- A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
- Aliens
- Other
I think it’s all of the above except maybe for H.
F, C and H. Hipsters have acquired a taste for Vogon poetry. Ironically of course.
Steve
Cartels, that and the safes in New Zealand boltholes.
This is what the economists call velocity. I’m with Dave, although last night Mr Jack and Mr Daniels had me thinking about H.
C, D, E. It’s being socked away in no-extradite countries.
Right now Trump is in the position of Samson chained up in the Philistine Temple (I stole this meme from another blog site) with his hair grown back and but still sighted. If he’s going down, IMO he’ll try to take down the whole rotten edifice of the federal government as far as he can. If he’s acquitted, he’ll break the chains and start lashing out with them at both the edifice and the audience who had come to cheer his demise. Pelosi & Co are rolling the bones hoping to come up all sixes or snake eyes (conviction in the senate). Almost everything right now (Collyer, head of the FISA court, lashing out at the FBI after saying nothing for years about their fabrications and lying, the Lisa Page lawsuit aimed at keeping her incriminating texts being released, Ginsberg’s health, Comey’s ‘oops I did bad’ interviews) seems to be no so much trying to take Trump down but to limit discovery. If people think politics and politicians has gone crazy in DC, I think it’s going to get a lot worse. The Democrats seem to be doing their best to force a real-honest-to-goodness constitutional crisis.
On top of all this, people had better out for the Virginia 2A mess, that could very ugly very fast if Northam and the legislature keeps pushing his unconstitutional agenda.