Numbers 20:12

We are impressed, indeed, very impressed, by the number $800 trillion (that is, 800,000 $billion) of financial instruments from “simple mortgages to interest-rate derivatives” that are daily affected by the bank rate settings for inter-bank loans (please see, Banksters, The Economist, July 7, 2012, and for more detailed data, BIS The Bank of International Settlements)

We know that the US GDP is about $15 trillion and that the rest of the world contributes another $50 trillion or so for a grand total of $65 trillion this year, or less than 1/10th of the money that’s supposed to be out there and which makes our billionaires look like paupers (and more like the rest of us).

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is, of course, the carefully estimated value of all the goods and services produced by labour and property (including investments and savings) within a national economy. It also includes government expenditures and exports but excludes the purchase of imports such as finished products or raw materials. On a global basis, the current account balance of exports less imports nets to approximately (but not quite) zero (about $250 billion).

The underlying, on the other hand, for all of this production is a market of about one thousand or so US companies with a market value of about $20 trillion and a book value of about 1/10th of that, or $2 trillion which we could multiply by three or four to get some idea of the book value of all the firms in the world (including private ones) – say, $10 trillion – that supports a global money economy of $800 trillion on an income of $65 trillion and assets of $10 trillion and we are immediately minded of another Numbers 20:12 written about three thousand years ago:

King James Version: 12 And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.

In the absence of faith and trust, we are simply doomed, aren’t we, and one has to wonder about what we think to be important if not our children and our children’s children and so forth. For example, on Bankster terms in Bankster Land,  so to speak, we could buy a house listed for $800,000 with a down payment of $10,000 and an income of $65,000 per year as long as the interest rate on our mortgage  remained below 2%. Amen.

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