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I've suddenly had a thought, of the global money supply and debt, how much is denominated in each of the major currencies? I think we all know the US dollar will be top, but who is second and how fast are they growing ?

Of course money supply is a very tricky thing to define in the first place, but approximations to M0, M1 etc. should not be too difficult to approximate.

I can't find any simple summary under google, but maybe I don't know the right keywords to search for.

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If we assume that debt vastly exceeds non-debt money, and debt is money for practical purposes, then this site seems useful

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/60-tril ... alization/

It seems clear that the Yen comes second and Euro third with Yuan a distant fourth. I suspect a lot of smaller nation debt is in one of the major currencies, particularly dollars and Yuan.

However, I am not sure how up to date it is, and it seems to only cover government debt, not private or corporate. Nor can I find the definition of debt it uses (eg. does it include expected future government pension liabilities , etc. ?)

Either way, it points to 80% of global debt belonging to OECD nations, and we can assume that these are the major currencies that will be forced to hyper inflate when debt becomes unpayable, unless the corporations and major banks decide not to return the favour and declare no nation is to big to fail.

People get fixated on debt being money and how the money supply grows using fractional reserve banking. What they tend to ignore is that most debt is gone into to acquire some asset worth the money.
Yes I have some debt but I have assets purchased with that borrowed money that are worth more then I owe on them so I have a positive net worth.
Not true in every case of course. Some have run up credit card bills living beyond their means and others have gone to five years of college and end up saying "Want fries with that" but large debts by corporations are usually for something they think can pay for itself plus a good profit.
Point being you should not look to total debt but to National net worth to measure the health of the system.

Almost all money is debt in the current monetary system apart from comparatively small amounts of QE money.

Many of the "assets" behind all this debt are in property and the price of that asset is to a large extent in its rarity value rather than its actual cost. The average house in the UK costs between £100,000 and £150,000 to build so the average value of of a house of £250,000 (end 2013) is largely made up of land cost, rarity value and profit. The land cost is largely made up of rarity value caused by corporate manipulation of the land market and a certain amount due to the planning system. Well over half the value of an average house is not supported by the asset cost but is speculative.

When you get to the price of houses in London which can vary from £500,000 to tens of millions the "value" is in the rarity of the commodity rather than its cost. A collapse in the oil market or in supply would severely dent these "values"! The dent would probably be enough to cause a problem with the banking system as the actual values plummet below price paid and loans come into question and cannot be supported by the actual values. this is probably true over the whole world in capital cities.

The other asset market is in agricultural land and agricultural land with a desirable house on it. Agricultural land has been much over valued in the UK at the moment as the production from that land cannot support the price of it. It has become a financial asset with an value inflated by rarity. When fossil fuels become a rarity again and land is the only source of energy, as a solar collector, it might regain its true value once more. that, I suspect, is much higher than it now inflated price.

Agricultural land with a desirable property on it is again over valued by the rarity of the house adn would become a liability to the bank supporting the loan on it or the wealth of the owner would be severely dented by a drop in value in a long recession. In a short recession property might be seen as a safe investment and the top end of the market might actually rise in cost although not in value.

kenneal - lagger wrote:Agricultural land has been much over valued in the UK at the moment as the production from that land cannot support the price of it. It has become a financial asset with an value inflated by rarity. When fossil fuels become a rarity again and land is the only source of energy, as a solar collector, it might regain its true value once more. that, I suspect, is much higher than it now inflated price.

Are you disagreeing with yourself here?

No! The first is short term. The second longer term, much longer, fifty to a hundred years - if oil lasts that long!

kenneal - lagger wrote:No! The first is short term. The second longer term, much longer, fifty to a hundred years - if oil lasts that long!

Once we start down the energy production curve five to ten percent a year land that is fit for growing a bio fuel or solar power will go up as fast as available energy supplies go down.
At any rate the owners of Ag land tend to think long term so the prospects of land getting cheap sometime between now and the post oil resurgence is pretty slim. The trick is to make a profit in the meantime during low crop prices.
Driving through Maryland's Eastern shore last week I saw lots of signs shouting "save our farms" over a logo of a wind turbine. Seems someone wants to put up some wind farms to suck up the sea breeze and the tax subsidies. I don't see how that would destroy the farms as soy beans and corn don't mind the sound of a turbine and the extra income might balance the books nicely.

vtsnowedin wrote:Driving through Maryland's Eastern shore last week I saw lots of signs shouting "save our farms" over a logo of a wind turbine. Seems someone wants to put up some wind farms to suck up the sea breeze and the tax subsidies. I don't see how that would destroy the farms as soy beans and corn don't mind the sound of a turbine and the extra income might balance the books nicely.

It sounds strange alright, though I know nothing of this specific case of course.

From your post, they're saying that wind farms will somehow destroy their farms. Do you know their reasoning behind this? They must be using some argument in that direction.

emordnilap wrote:

vtsnowedin wrote:Driving through Maryland's Eastern shore last week I saw lots of signs shouting "save our farms" over a logo of a wind turbine. Seems someone wants to put up some wind farms to suck up the sea breeze and the tax subsidies. I don't see how that would destroy the farms as soy beans and corn don't mind the sound of a turbine and the extra income might balance the books nicely.

It sounds strange alright, though I know nothing of this specific case of course.

From your post, they're saying that wind farms will somehow destroy their farms. Do you know their reasoning behind this? They must be using some argument in that direction.

I was only there for a weekend deer hunting so did not have time to explore the specifics. As the working farms there are quite large buy my standards (The one I was hunting on is four square miles)I expect the movement is made up of non farm owners concerned about the aesthetics and their house property values rather then the farm's bottom line.

http://www.myeasternshoremd.com/news/ke ... fe0ce.html

Usual 'Windfarms = industrial desolation ' mindlessness.

"If you're for wind turbines, I'm not going to recognize you at today's meeting," Graham said.

There's a nice story here at the moment whereby councillors were spoofed by a bogus wind farm company (i.e., they were told the company wanted to find out how their application might get better treatment). Greasing palms is the norm.

The brown envelope mentality has not gone away. What's ludicrous is that one councillor claims that he knew he was being set up but played along because (his words) "the would be no show" - meaning tv show. What a bozo. If that is true, then fools elected a fool. If it's an excuse made after the fact, he expects the rest of us to be fools as well as him.

kenneal - lagger wrote:Almost all money is debt in the current monetary system apart from comparatively small amounts of QE money.....

QE money is also indirectly a form of debt as well, if it is not to cause Weimar style inflation. The way such "debt" is "repaid" is via higher taxes and/or reduced public services. The only way that repayment can be avoided is via higher production levels to give the new money a home to go to.

Whichever way, there is no such thing as a free lunch