How many dollars are there in the world?:
There is a nice official answer to this question. The figure is known as M0, the monetary base, and its current value is about 825 billion.
So, we know that n, the number of dollars, is 825 billion, M0, right?
Wrong. The problem is that this assignment, n = M0, simply does not make sense. It is not consistent with economic reality. Of course USG can enforce it, as it can enforce anything, but the result will be social and economic disaster. North America will become a burned-out Mad Max wasteland, patrolled by marauding gangs and packs of radioactive mutant wolves.
The US governemtn has a national debt of roughly $10 trillion, not counting unfunded entitlements:
Moreover, this debt is not even discounted. Quite the contrary: it is considered “risk-free.”Question: how, exactly, in a world that contains only 825 billion dollars, can a debt of $10 trillion be risk-free?
Moreover, USG runs an annual trade deficit of $750 billion. Even if it started each January 1 with all 825 billion of these dollars in the country, which it most certainly didn’t, its subjects should be feeling pretty impoverished by Christmas. But no. They run the same trade deficit, year after year after year. Perhaps the dollars are being lent back to them — but why?
There can only be one answer: this $825 billion number is just plain wrong.
825 billion is the number of formal dollars outstanding. It is not the droid we are looking for, though.