Kids have the idea that money always comes in stacks of tens and twenties, and by the time they grow up they learn to deal with checks, banks, and wire transfers.
The total amount of US currency (dollar bills, coins, etc.) is less than $800 billion. All the bank accounts (checking, savings, CD, money market accounts) total close to $6,000 billion.
For every dollar that gets printed, seven or eight are what people say they got in the bank.
Oh for chris efin sakes, save the patronizing lecture of fractional reserve banking for Toddsterpatriot or groanup. Most of us know that the Federal reserve creates very little of the money by actually printing federal reserve notes with quaint little pictures of former US presidents on them. Most of the created currency is in the form of computer bits credited by the Federal reserve to depository accounts as the result of open market operations.
So what is the efin point? At the end of all of your mumbo jumbo does the federal reserve create through its actions money, or doesn't it? If it doesn't who else creates money (other than the banking system through the multiplication effect from fractional reserve banking that only you are so arrogant enough as to assert no one else understands)?
$800 billion in currency? Is that “all”? ;)
I remember reading somewhere that fully 70 per cent of the currency/cash in USD is outside the country, held by foreigners. Is that true?
At one time, the dollar was among the most favored currencies to hold, esp. by those who lived in countries where the leaders were graduates of the Mugabe School of Finance. Once, in Phnomh Penh, a nice street vendor wanted to refuse a $20 bill because a corner was folded over. Couldn’t believe it. They liked fresh, crisp currency.