How Much Money Is There in the World?

how much cash is there in US currency? If you took all the bills and coins floating around today in the world and added them all up, how much money would you have. All that hard and easily liquidated currency is known as the M zero money supply or monetary base, and this includes the bills and coins and people's pockets and mattresses, the money on hand in bank vaults, and

all the deposits those banks have at reserve banks. According to the Federal Reserve, there was five point eight trillion dollars in the M zero supply stream as of March of twenty twenty one. That sounds like an incredible amount,

but think about it this way. According to the U S Census, there were three hundred thirty two million two hundred ninety thousand, nine hundred and sixty four people alive in the United States as of May twenty twenty one, So if you took all the cash and divided it up equally, each person would only have about seventeen thousand, four hundred and fifty four dollars in cash on them, which is nothing to sneeze at. But obviously there's some

money missing, but there's an easy explanation for that. The Federal Reserve says that at any given time, between one half and two thirds of the M zero money stock of US dollars is held overseas. The rest of the money is in bank accounts of various types, and the Federal Reserve has tracked these funds in three different values, known as the M one, M two, and M money supplies. M three has since been dropped, but more on that

in a second. M one represents all the currency outside the US Treasury, Federal Reserve banks, and the vaults of depository institutions. It also includes demand deposits at commercial banks excluding a few specific types, the Federal Reserve float, and other liquid deposits. As of March one, the M one money supply for US dollars equaled another eighteen point seven trillion dollars, or so M two is the M one money supply plus small denomination time deposits that is less

than a hundred thousand dollars. Again, as of marche the M two money supply was about nineteen point nine trillion dollars. M three is M two plus larger certificates of deposits. As of March two thousand six, though, the FED stopped tracking the M three money stock as an economic indicator because it felt it didn't add any information on economic

activity that wasn't already available from the M two. So all told, anyone looking for all of the United States dollars in the world as of could expect to find approximately nineteen point nine trillion in existence using that M to money supply definition. If you just want to count the value of notes and coins, there are about two point one trillion dollars worth of those floating around the globe.

But suppose you wanted to know the actual number of notes in circulation rather than how much they were worth. At the end of the FED estimated that there were fifty point three billion notes, ranging from humble one dollar bills to mighty ten thousand dollar bills in circulation. This

information is updated annually. So now that we've figured out the U S money supply as much as we can, oh, what about the rest of the world That gets a little trickier due to the sheer number of currencies there are around the world, Even accounting for unified currencies like the European euro and the African Eco, each of which is accepted in several nations throughout those continents, the problem is exacerbated when a federal government tries to mint its

way out of trouble. Take, for example, the Zimbabwean dollar, which saw such dramatic hyperinflation in the twenty odds as the government tried to support public project spending by printing surplus notes that its inflation rate hit five hundred and sixteen quintillion percent in two thousand eight, and it's a hundred trillion dollar note was worth just forty cents US.

The government abandoned that version of its currency entirely after that, and it never collected the bills or let people exchange them, So no one knows the final tally in circulation. But even outside of extreme circumstances like that, anyone trying to answer this question in earnest has their work cut out for them, but yes, people do try. Perhaps the closest estimate to how much money exists in the world was released by def de Jardins, the editor in chief of

Visual Capitalists in and updated in. De Jardins added up all of the world's silver, gold, top stock, exchanges, cryptocurrencies, and much much more and came out with the amount of about two point seven quadrillion dollars. That's a lot of mula. He also estimated the value of all the coins and banknotes at the world at just six point

six trillion. Today's episode is based on the article how much actual money is there in the World on how stuff Works dot com written by Katherine Whitforn and Francisco Gusman. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Playing. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H