How much money is there in the world?
Jan 12, 2018
Mitchell Hartman, a Senior Reporter for American radio show Marketplace answered a popular question. Read on...
"I'm curious as to how much money is out there in the world? Does anybody keep records as to how much money the world has?" - Listener Elizabeth Masten, from Norfolk, Virginia, USA
Excerpt from Market Place article
Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said one part of the answer can be found in information published by the U.S. Federal Reserve:
“It’s a number called M0, which is essentially the number of notes and coins in circulation. For the United States, that number on the Federal Reserve website is somewhere in the vicinity of $1.5 trillion."
Kirkegaard said that a comparable tally of currency in circulation from all over the world, tracked by the Bank for International Settlements, totals about $5 trillion.
But using a more inclusive definition of money, “that amount goes much, much higher,” explained Jeff Desjardins at the financial media website Visual Capitalist, which has published an infographic on the topic.
“Add in checking accounts, savings accounts, money-market accounts — not quite physical money, but you can make a bank transaction digitally and use that as money,” and Desjardins said the total amount of money easily accessible in the world economy grows by several multiples. This is called broad money, and according to the CIA World Factbook, and the global total is in excess of $80 trillion.
Source
Hartman, Mitchell. "How much money is there in the world?" Marketplace. I've Always Wondered series. October 30, 2017. Accessed January 11, 2018.
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