MONEY BORROWED:
MONEY OWNED:As for money owed by every single person and country in the world, the grand total is $215 trillion, with some 33% of it borrowed in the last decade.
MONEY OWNED IF YOU INCLUDE INVESTMENTS:For purists, who believe “money” refers only to physical “narrow money” (bank notes, coins, and money deposited in savings or checking accounts), the total is somewhere around $36.8 trillion. If you’re looking at “broad money,” which isn’t just physical money and includes any money held in easily accessible accounts, the number is about $90.4 trillion.
FIGURES ARE FROM 2015. ANYONE WANT TO TRY INTERPRETING THIS FOR US?But for those preferring an even broader interpretation, including bitcoin BTCUSD, +1.56% , ethereum and other cryptocurrencies, plus above-ground gold supply, and funds invested in various financial products like derivatives, the amount is in the quadrillions.
This is what a quadrillion looks like written out: 1,000,000,000,000,000.
Funds invested in derivatives alone total at minimum $544 trillion, and the high-end estimate is $1.2 quadrillion. In fact, there is more money in derivatives than in all the stock markets combined, which is a comparatively paltry $73 trillion. The U.S. accounts for the biggest slice of that global market cap pie, thanks to companies like Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.56% , Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, -0.07% and Microsoft Corp MSFT, -0.12%
Investment in commercial real estate, often the most visible symbol of wealth, pales in comparison to stocks or derivatives at $29 trillion.