Where is all the money?

Question

With the US, UK, Britain, China, France, Italy, Canada, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, China, Russia, and almost every other country on the planet having huge national debt, where is all the money ? Did someone con us all ?

Answer 1

With the banks.
The national governments all have large deficits (they are good at spending money but raising the same amount in taxes is another matter), so they turn to the banks and to the bond market to make up the difference. The banks in turn lend money out and make a lot of money from it (if only the govt had thought of doing that!), much of which actually goes toward the expansion of businesses, which is good for the economy.

So there are governments in debt, citizens in debt, banks who are waiting for loans to be paid off, and only rarely businesses in big debt - because unlike governments businesses have to know that they will survive in good shape whatever happens - they cannot simply raise taxes.

& having debt does not mean you do not have lots of money too. I estimate that at any given point in time, governments have 15% of all cash; people have 30% for themselves; and the remaining 55% is with various forms of businesses.

Answer 2

Debt is measured in terms of government bonds. The government also has some assets, which are land, buildings, companies, gold, foreign reserves, natural resources, etc

Debt is a liability to a government and an asset to the owner of the bond. The government believes it owns some assets, which mean that when it is declared bankrupt it can sell them to pay off it's debt.

However, the actual realisable value of these assets become negligent when the government is bankrupt as it would require an administrator to sell off it's assets at a fraction of their worth.

Indeed as most of the assets would reside in property, which would then be owned effectively by the succeeding government, the only people purchasing the assets would be the succeeding government.

The succeeding government thinks their assets are worth nothing whilst the existing government is still in power. Therefore, the current government must be bankrupt!

QED

Answer 3

It's all in private industries. I would think that a huge chunk of the U.S. national debt has gone to defense contractors.

Answer 4

Money is a perception. Most people in the U.S. would be dirt poor/third world country if it wasn't for credit. Get an education, damn!

Answer 5

I think Barclays Bank has it all. They made massive profits this year according to the news. ! ! ! ! !

Answer 6

It's under my mattress. You're not getting any of it.

Answer 7

The Arabs have it all.