Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Federal government; net worth (IMA), Level



The units are a bit confusing. The units (in the left side border) are given as "Millions of Dollars". And the lowest number on the vertical scale is given as -12M. That's 12 Million in the hole. But it's not twelve million dollars. It's twelve million million. 12 Trillion in the hole.

But you probably knew that.

4 comments:

Greg said...

I aint buying that graph. I mean I want to know how it made its calculations

Net worth is assets minus liabilities. I'm sure the 16 tril of national debt are the liabilities but a large number is actually owed to itself and therefore meaningless in the discussion, but do you want me to believe that everything the USgovt owns is worth only
4 trillion?

Unknown said...

That graph is so convoluted. Just about anytime, Monetary sovereign finances are compared with the finances of monetary NON-sovereign actors, the results are disastrous.

If I analyze this graph in terms of my own life, it looks terrible. My liabilities are way higher than my assets!

But since every liability is simultaneously an asset to someone else, If I have a net assets, then someone must have net liabilities.

So if the Govt had a strong NET asset position, then the non-Govt would have a strong liability position to the Govt.

Why would society want to be in a net liability position TO ITS OWN GOVT???

The Arthurian said...

Auburn: "if the Govt had a strong NET asset position, then the non-Govt would have a strong liability position to the Govt.
Why would society want to be in a net liability position TO ITS OWN GOVT???"

Hey, Auburn. On that theme, how would you describe ... the middle ages maybe ... when there was treasure in the treasury. Or the time of Robin Hood and King John, maybe.
?

Unknown said...

I would describe those situations in a worse way than I would describe Apple today.

Apple has its $150 billion in cash\equivalents at the expense of the non-apple economy.

The Govt could also accumulate financial assets at the expense of the non-govt economy.

The big difference would be that theoretically, the non-apple economy gave those financial assets to Apple voluntarily through exchange and King John would acquire those financial assets ostensibly by force.

But now that We are the Govt, there is absolutely no reason on earth to have Our Govt accumulate NET financial assets from society that created said Govt.