1. Because the central bank no longer links the currency with the price of gold, "currency" has become a vague concept. It becomes a promise to be paid, not a treasure stored forever. Of course, most central banks still have a certain amount of gold reserves and foreign exchange reserves that can be saved in times of financial turmoil. Central banks around the world have only about $845 billion worth of gold. Central banks don't need more gold reserves, because they can print money when there is a serious crisis. The United States and Britain will soon start printing money.
2. Economists' narrow definition of "money" is cash in circulation (M0) plus reserves of commercial banks in the central bank. From June 5, 2008 to 2008 10, the global M0 was about $3.9 trillion. Since the bank collapse, people began to feel nervous about the reliability of banks. Under the "partial reserve bank" system, banks can issue loans several times as much as deposits, but their reserves in the central bank are relatively small.
Every time a bank lends out 4 yuan, it has only 1 yuan in the central bank. If you deposit 100 yuan in the bank, the bank can lend 80 yuan to a person who wants to buy a car; After the car companies collect the money, they deposit the 80 yuan in the bank, and the bank can lend the 64 yuan to others, and so on. Your deposit is 65,438+000 yuan, and the bank can lend 360 yuan at most. The assets and liabilities of large commercial banks in various countries have swelled to $39 trillion due to the endless tricks of commercial banks to encourage people to borrow.
When the economic bubble burst, people criticized that the banking supervision system had gone wrong. However, if we compare the supervision of commercial banks with the so-called "shadow banking system" (note 1), it is a drop in the bucket. Under the leadership of investment banks and hedge funds, traders are constantly innovating more extreme ways to break through the restrictions on borrowing money and improve returns. The value of global credit derivatives has reached an astonishing $863 trillion, which is many times the total value of all global economic activities. A huge bubble has been formed, and now it is bursting one after another. How much money is there in the world? It's hard to calculate. According to economists' estimates, the total value of global assets has reached 290 trillion, but the global GDP is only 55 trillion.
Nominally, we all feel good about ourselves and feel rich, so we dare to spend money. Looking at this inverted pyramid from the bottom up, the value of debt and assets far exceeds the output value we have.
Just like Madoff's Ponzi scheme, when we all firmly believe that the economy is growing, the debt is also surging. Once the crisis comes, it will really "suddenly collapse like a building."
7. The government's attempt to maintain stability by injecting capital into the banking system may not be completely useless, but it is really a drop in the bucket. The government has injected about 1.9 trillion into the banking system (the red part in the picture).
8。 The formula of money is actually very simple: MV = PQ, and these four letters stand for:
demand for money
V. Velocity of money circulation
price of commodities
Q quantity of goods
During the period of economic prosperity, various financial innovation tools accelerated the circulation speed of money. Now banks no longer lend to each other, and the circulation speed slows down immediately. Even if the money supply increases, it is still not enough to prevent the sharp decline in commodity prices or GDP.