Why does it matter?
"You can't earn all the money," a common saying goes. Of course, that saying is aimed at those the speaker considers obsessed with material wealth. But if you were to indeed get your hands on all the money out there how wealthy would you be?
I have asked myself that question many times. Perhaps, so have you. My motivation was not some sort of a perverted greed but general curiousity and desire to assess the global economic situation. And yes, he subject may feel boring and mundane but "money is power", as another common saying goes. And one only gets to ignore the real power at one's own peril.
So, how do you figure out how much money floats out there?
The question is not trivial. With all the currencies flowing out there, with all the various assessments of various valuables, it is hard to tell how much all of that stuff is worth. Hence perhaps he best possible assessment would be one where all of the key assets are evaluated individually and then a snapshot is presented.
In his May 2020 article listed below Jeff Desjardins of Visual Capitalist has attempted just that. Desjardins has a solid reputation in financial circles, at least based on assessments he has received on LinkedIn, and his figures seem to closely follow those presented by many other seemingly reputable sources. In addition hey seem to be inline with other important estimates, such as those of GDP's of key economic powers, etc. - at least within an order of magnitude. And yes, you could say this was poor accuracy and you would be right but best I can tell this sometimes is indeed the best you can do.
Desjardins' estimates
So let us go over Jeff Desjardins' figures (and yes, let's keep in mind that they are almost three years old).
| Category | Value ($ Billions, USD) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Silver | $44 | World Silver Survey 2019 |
| Cryptocurrencies | $244 | CoinMarketCap |
| Global Military Spending | $1,782 | World Bank |
| U.S. Federal Deficit (FY 2020) | $3,800 | U.S. CBO (Projected, as of April 2020) |
| Coins & Bank Notes | $6,662 | BIS |
| Fed's Balance Sheet | $7,037 | U.S. Federal Reserve |
| The World's Billionaires | $8,000 | Forbes |
| Gold | $10,891 | World Gold Council (2020) |
| The Fortune 500 | $22,600 | Fortune 500 (2019 list) |
| Stock Markets | $89,475 | WFE (April 2020) |
| Narrow Money Supply | $35,183 | CIA Factbook |
| Broad Money Supply | $95,698 | CIA Factbook |
| Global Debt | $252,600 | IIF Debt Monitor |
| Global Real Estate | $280,600 | Savills Global Research (2018 est.) |
| Global Wealth | $360,603 | Credit Suisse |
| Derivatives (Market Value) | $11,600 | BIS (Dec 2019) |
| Derivatives (Notional Value) | $558,500 | BIS (Dec 2019) |
| Derivatives (Notional Value - High end) | $1,000,000 | Various sources (Unofficial) |
The global broad money supply is estimated at just over 95 trillion USD (yes, that is about 95,698,000,000,000 USD). Broad money supply is defined as a supply of cash, both in fully liquid form (narrow money supply) and less liquid forms (parked bank deposits, etc., best I can tell). And yes, that is a lot of cash! But if any group decided to gobble up all the real estate in the world, estimated at bout 280 trillion USD - where would they get the cash for that? Never mind if they set their eyes on the 550T derivatives pool. So, as you can see, the picture here is full of mismatches and incongruencies, which, in this author's opinion, is a sign of severe issues with the global financial system. So one needs no special expertise or access to see the issues - publicly available data would do.
I will likely write more on these matters. For now, as always - do your own research, use your own brain, draw your own conclusions.
Special note on cryptocurrencies
Like I said, Dejardins' data is a bit outdated. At present, CoinMarketCap reports the world cryptos adding up to over 1.1T USD. Assuming the global broad money supply is about 100T USD we have cryptos standing at over 1% of it. Personally, I would like to see cryptos taking over - and this is likely to annul the role of government as it is constituted at present - but it is clear that cryptos are no longer a fad but rather a significant component of the world's financial system. Contrary to the predictions of all those experts with big names over the last decade.
References
All of the World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization
Jeff Desjardins, Visual Capitalist, 27 May 2020
What is all the property in the world worth?
Isabelle Fraser, The Telegraph, 24 January 2016
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