4 ms·
You read it wrong. It's cash in hand not public debt they have more of.
by jcoffland 11y ago
You read it wrong. It's cash in hand not public debt they have more of.
- carboncopy 11y agoNo, I read it right. It's American public debt they hold. They don't have 1 trillion dollars in cash sitting in a vault. They are holding U.S. Treasury bonds. And again, I don't understand why having 1 trillion dollars in a reserve bank is a useful measure of economic power. The Chinese economy has a GDP of $10tn compared with the U.S. economy of $17tn. That is an example of a meaningful metric of power. ^^^ the parent commenter edited his entry after I submitted my original comment, which changes the relevance of my comment.
- jcoffland 11y agoThey have $3.9T worth of cash reserves sitting in a vault in addition to holding over $1T in US debt.
- khuey 11y agoNo, they don't. There's only 1.4 trillion dollars in circulation. http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm
- jcoffland 11y agoNot all of their cash reserves are denominated in US dollars.
- khuey 11y agoThere's around 5 trillion US dollars worth of hard currency in the world. http://gizmodo.com/5995301/how-much-money-is-there-on-earth http://gizmodo.com/5995301/how-much-money-is-there-on-earth 80% of it is not sitting in a vault in China.
- StreamBright 11y agoI think it is more like economic long term insurance than power.