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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here with today's question, how

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Speaker 1: much money is there in the world. To make this

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Speaker 1: question answerable, let's start by asking how much money is

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Speaker 1: there in actual United States dollars in the world. Because

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Speaker 1: the statistics for the United States are relatively easy to

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Speaker 1: come by, we can examine this question in a couple

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Speaker 1: different ways. The first way to look at it is

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Speaker 1: how much cash is there in US currency? If you

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Speaker 1: took all the bills and coins floating around today in

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Speaker 1: the world and added them all up, how much money

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Speaker 1: would you have. All that hard and easily liquidated currency

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Speaker 1: is known as the M zero money supply or monetary base,

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Speaker 1: and this includes the bills and coins and people's pockets

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Speaker 1: and mattresses, the money on hand in bank vaults, and

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Speaker 1: all the deposits those banks have at reserve banks. According

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Speaker 1: to the Federal Reserve, there was five point eight trillion

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Speaker 1: dollars in the M zero supply stream as of March

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Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one. That sounds like an incredible amount,

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Speaker 1: but think about it this way. According to the U

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Speaker 1: S Census, there were three hundred thirty two million two

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Speaker 1: hundred ninety thousand, nine hundred and sixty four people alive

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Speaker 1: in the United States as of May twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 1: So if you took all the cash and divided it

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Speaker 1: up equally, each person would only have about seventeen thousand,

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Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty four dollars in cash on them,

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Speaker 1: which is nothing to sneeze at. But obviously there's some

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Speaker 1: money missing, but there's an easy explanation for that. The

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Speaker 1: Federal Reserve says that at any given time, between one

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Speaker 1: half and two thirds of the M zero money stock

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Speaker 1: of US dollars is held overseas. The rest of the

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Speaker 1: money is in bank accounts of various types, and the

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Speaker 1: Federal Reserve has tracked these funds in three different values,

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Speaker 1: known as the M one, M two, and M money supplies.

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Speaker 1: M three has since been dropped, but more on that

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Speaker 1: in a second. M one represents all the currency outside

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Speaker 1: the US Treasury, Federal Reserve banks, and the vaults of

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Speaker 1: depository institutions. It also includes demand deposits at commercial banks

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Speaker 1: excluding a few specific types, the Federal Reserve float, and

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Speaker 1: other liquid deposits. As of March one, the M one

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Speaker 1: money supply for US dollars equaled another eighteen point seven

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Speaker 1: trillion dollars, or so M two is the M one

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Speaker 1: money supply plus small denomination time deposits that is less

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Speaker 1: than a hundred thousand dollars. Again, as of marche the

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Speaker 1: M two money supply was about nineteen point nine trillion dollars.

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Speaker 1: M three is M two plus larger certificates of deposits.

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Speaker 1: As of March two thousand six, though, the FED stopped

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Speaker 1: tracking the M three money stock as an economic indicator

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Speaker 1: because it felt it didn't add any information on economic

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Speaker 1: activity that wasn't already available from the M two. So

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Speaker 1: all told, anyone looking for all of the United States

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Speaker 1: dollars in the world as of could expect to find

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Speaker 1: approximately nineteen point nine trillion in existence using that M

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Speaker 1: to money supply definition. If you just want to count

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Speaker 1: the value of notes and coins, there are about two

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Speaker 1: point one trillion dollars worth of those floating around the globe.

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Speaker 1: But suppose you wanted to know the actual number of

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Speaker 1: notes in circulation rather than how much they were worth.

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Speaker 1: At the end of the FED estimated that there were

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Speaker 1: fifty point three billion notes, ranging from humble one dollar

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Speaker 1: bills to mighty ten thousand dollar bills in circulation. This

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Speaker 1: information is updated annually. So now that we've figured out

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Speaker 1: the U S money supply as much as we can, oh,

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Speaker 1: what about the rest of the world That gets a

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Speaker 1: little trickier due to the sheer number of currencies there

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Speaker 1: are around the world, Even accounting for unified currencies like

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Speaker 1: the European euro and the African Eco, each of which

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Speaker 1: is accepted in several nations throughout those continents, the problem

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Speaker 1: is exacerbated when a federal government tries to mint its

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Speaker 1: way out of trouble. Take, for example, the Zimbabwean dollar,

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Speaker 1: which saw such dramatic hyperinflation in the twenty odds as

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Speaker 1: the government tried to support public project spending by printing

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Speaker 1: surplus notes that its inflation rate hit five hundred and

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Speaker 1: sixteen quintillion percent in two thousand eight, and it's a

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Speaker 1: hundred trillion dollar note was worth just forty cents US.

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Speaker 1: The government abandoned that version of its currency entirely after that,

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Speaker 1: and it never collected the bills or let people exchange them,

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Speaker 1: So no one knows the final tally in circulation. But

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Speaker 1: even outside of extreme circumstances like that, anyone trying to

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Speaker 1: answer this question in earnest has their work cut out

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Speaker 1: for them, but yes, people do try. Perhaps the closest

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Speaker 1: estimate to how much money exists in the world was

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Speaker 1: released by def de Jardins, the editor in chief of

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Speaker 1: Visual Capitalists in and updated in. De Jardins added up

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Speaker 1: all of the world's silver, gold, top stock, exchanges, cryptocurrencies,

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Speaker 1: and much much more and came out with the amount

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Speaker 1: of about two point seven quadrillion dollars. That's a lot

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Speaker 1: of mula. He also estimated the value of all the

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Speaker 1: coins and banknotes at the world at just six point

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Speaker 1: six trillion. Today's episode is based on the article how

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Speaker 1: much actual money is there in the World on how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com written by Katherine Whitforn and Francisco Gusman.

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Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership

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Speaker 1: with how stuff Works dot Com and is produced by

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