“There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money”*…
The beginning of a MUCH longer infographic
This infographic was initially created to show how much money exists in its different forms. For example, to highlight how much physical cash there is in comparison to broader measures of money which include saving and checking account deposits.
Interestingly, what is considered “money” depends on who you are asking.
Are the abstractions created by Central Banks really money? What about gold, bitcoins, or other hard assets?
Since we first released this infographic in 2015, “All the World’s Money and Markets” has taken on a different meaning to us and many others. It’s a way of simplifying a complex universe of currencies, assets, and other financial instruments in a way that people can understand.
Numbers represented in the data visualization range from the size of the above-ground silver market ($17 billion) to the notional value of all derivatives ($1.2 quadrillion as a high-end estimate). In between those two extremes, we’ve added many other familiar measures, such as the GDP of California, the value of equities, the real estate market, along with different money supply metrics to give perspective…
See the infographic in its entirety– and ponder such take-aways as that the total of all derivatives outstanding today exceeds the total before the crash of 2008 the led to the Great Recession— at “All of the World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization.”
* Sophocles, Antigone
###
As we batten down the hatches, we might send careful-calculated birthday greetings to Amartya Kumar Sen; he was born on this date in 1933. A polymathic economist and philosopher, he has made material contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, thinking on economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, and indices of the measure of well-being of citizens of developing countries.
Sen’s revolutionary contribution to development economics and social indicators is the concept of “capability” developed in his article “Equality of What”. He argues that governments should be measured against the concrete capabilities of their citizens. This is because top-down development will always trump human rights as long as the definition of terms remains in doubt (is a “right” something that must be provided or something that simply cannot be taken away?). For instance, in the United States citizens have a hypothetical “right” to vote. To Sen, this concept is fairly empty. In order for citizens to have a capacity to vote, they first must have “functionings”. These “functionings” can range from the very broad, such as the availability of education, to the very specific, such as transportation to the polls. Only when such barriers are removed can the citizen truly be said to act out of personal choice. It is up to the individual society to make the list of minimum capabilities guaranteed by that society. For an example of the “capabilities approach” in practice, see Martha Nussbaum‘s Women and Human Development. [source]
Called the “conscience of his profession,” Sen was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998; India’s Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics; and in 2017, the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science.
