i’m just going through some basic financial philosophy discussions and i’m just trying to clarify the basics.

how much money is there in total, in the world?

up until yesterday i had assumed that the total amount of money in the world is zero ($0) because what one person has in bank account, another person has in debt at the same time, since money is literally nothing else than a codified form of debt.

now i’m wondering, is this even accurate? if a big bank takes out a loan from the central bank, say, it takes $1B in loan, then it has $1B in money on the account but also $1B in liability at the same time, so the sum is zero. However, there is an interest on the loan, let’s say 2%. Then the bank owes $1.02B actually, while only having $1B on the account. So the total amount isn’t zero, it’s negative. Is this correct?

  • CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world
    6·
    11 hours ago

    In fractional reserve banking, money and debt are not a one to one ratio as your post suggested. It’s often a 9 to one or more. Many countries don’t even have reserve requirements. After 2008, one big change was creating contingent capital to hold banks accountable. That is, in the event of losses they can’t pay back due tonexcessive risk taking, they pull from bank stock and convert to funds to repay debts before governments bail them out.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

    As to how much money in the world?

    Not sure if anyone has a good grip on that as each country has their own systems, what counts as money, etc…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply

    It’s probably easier and somewhat accurate to say there is infinite money. We just make as much as we need, on demand.

    Edit. A bank takes a loan and pay 2%, but they lend it 10 times over at 4% the money supply grows very quickly, 2% vs 4%x10, but if the loans went to productive things, the economy should be bigger, so this should not be inflationary.

    Nobody manages money supply vs inflation if that is what you’re getting at. These days it’s mostly interest rates and CEO groupthink of layoffs to control inflation.

    • RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world
      2·
      11 hours ago

      Nobody manages money supply vs inflation

      It’s managed via interest rates, which to a degree are controlled by the world bank.

    • Aniki@feddit.orgOP
      1·
      10 hours ago

      yeah i’m actually asking not so much with inflation in mind, more out of general interest into how things work. i’m just trying to understand the distribution of money and wealth throughout the world, for which it would help to understand the total sum of all money, and of all wealth (which is not the same!) in the first place.

      money and wealth is not the same btw. by money i mean money issued by the central bank (i.e. USD) while wealth is the sum of all assets, which can include ownership of land and real estate, for example.

      i suspect that the total amount of money in the world is close to zero, because what the central bank gives out in loans, becomes liabilities to the loan holder to pay back, so the sum of money + liability is zero. since you (at least formally) have to pay back what you took out as loan. meanwhile the amount of total wealth in the world is larger than zero, because the amount of total real estate in the world is larger than zero. so these two terms are not the same at all.