There is about $829 billion dollars of U.S. currency in circulation; the majority is held outside the United States.
Tag: money
Special Report: The haves, the have-nots and the dreamless dead | Reuters
Wealth concentration. Pay attention. This will become the new metric.
Kapur told clients in 2005 that the United States and a handful of other economies were developing into “plutonomies” where the wealthy few powered economic growth and consumed much of its bounty, while the “multitudinous many” shared the leftovers.
Plutonomies come around only once or twice a century, he argued — 16th century Spain, 17th century Holland, the Gilded Age. The last time it happened in the United States was during the “Roaring 1920s”.
There was money to be made by buying shares of luxury companies that made toys for the rich, he told clients, suggesting a basket of stocks that included upscale retailer Burberry and luxury home builder Toll Brothers.
“When I presented this to clients, they said, ‘Okay, this is interesting because you’re telling me what happened in the 1920s is happening right now, and you obviously know what happened after 1929, right?’,” Kapur said in an interview.
His response? That can’t happen again because we know better now.
“To be perfectly honest…. I certainly didn’t think it would all melt down in 2007. I’d be lying if I said that.”
Finding a Good Financial Bill in 2,300 Pages | NYTimes.com
I did something I doubt few people have dared. I took the liberty of a 13-hour flight back from Asia earlier this week to read all 2,300-plus pages of the bill. Yes, all of them.
My law professor verdict: There are many things to applaud in this bill and much in there that will substantially enhance the government’s power to regulate the financial industry. On the whole, if you think that the financial industry needs more supervision and financial regulators more tools, you should be relatively happy. If you are an advocate of big world changing ideas like breaking up the banks, you will be less so.
Goldman Sachs Should Cut Losses in SEC Standoff (Update1) – Bloomberg.com
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. may be better off cutting its losses instead of fighting what it terms “unfounded” fraud claims
Regulators ease up on small business loans | CNN Money
I hope this is true.
Hoping to ease the small-business credit crunch, six regulatory agencies recently banded together in a joint statement essentially promising to back off second-guessing banks’ loans. “Prudent” small business lending “will not be subject to supervisory criticism,” a regulatory group led by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) said earlier this month.
Best Places to Launch a Small Business 2009 – Lending Hot Spots – FORTUNE Small Business
The link below has
data on banks that have made loans through the SBA’s 7(a) small business loan program in the 2009 fiscal year.
Find Out Where Your Money Goes! | An Occasional Series
I hear nonstop bitching from Democrats and Republicans and Independents about where all the bailout (or stimulus) money is going. This is one of those times in life where the more educated about reality you are, the better.
Click here to be taken to a map that shows which banks received TARP money. This is from the government website http://www.financialstability.gov. At whim or random, we will keep putting information from this site out because it’s important stuff. But really, you should become familiar with it so you at least know what the facts are (or ‘facts’ are, depending 0n your political affiliation).
You know how to tell when a politician is lying, right?
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION – MOVE YOUR MONEY!!!
Banks That Bundled Bad Debt Also Bet Against It | NYTimes.com
“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”
Read on to find out how Goldman Sachs created and sold securities – they thought would lose money – to investors.
Consumers have trouble finding falling prices|money.cnn.com
The government says consumers are paying less for their everyday needs compared to a year ago. But if it feels like your dollar is not going as far as it used to, you’re not alone.
Dispatches From The Front 