Okay...all packed...all these years of living out of a suitcase pay off sometimes...
So far I hope my hurriedly written posts have made sense. I usually do a better job, but the time pressure thing...plus I want to try to get some good information put down before this thread deteriorates so much it has to be locked.
To summarize "where did the money go?" Much of the money was never there to begin with, or it is double and triple counted as it moves through the economy. This will strike many as suspicious, or odd, but in reality the system works quite well most of the time.
When it doesn't work well is when there is a loss of credibility in the banking system. We can debate the root causes for the recent banking system failures, but the basics of how it works is more important to understand...otherwise we're just blowing hot air.
We're all familiar with "liar loans", and perhaps to a lesser extent "collateralized debt obligations" and "credit default swaps". To keep it very simple, banks were able to loan against assets that ultimately proved to have dubious, or no value. Once the overall economy began to slow, in large part to high energy prices experienced in early to mid 2008, defaults began to occur in residential housing. Suddenly banks and investors found themselves trying to figure out how to collect money owed on mortgages, and insurance policies (credit default swaps) that were marketed to protect the lenders.
It soon became clear that there was almost no way to trace CDS's and CDO's back to the underlying mortgages they were written against. Now the balance sheet problems start piling up for the banks. Just a few months earlier, bank A might have had a balance sheet with ten billion dollars in assets. Now there's no way for certain to know how to value these assets. As a result, lending activities by the bank are curtailed because they have to prove to the federal government that they have adequate reserves to meet requirements.
Now we have a big problem. Credit is a necessary tool for businesses and consumers. Credit is oftentimes used improperly, but just as a hammer can make a hole in a wall just as easily as it can drive a nail the borrower is the ultimate arbiter of how effective the tool is.
Credit availability increases velocity. If most of us want to buy a new car, or a late model used one, we finance it. The money we pay for the car doesn't stop at the dealership...it pays a commission to a salesperson who buys gas for his car, pays his mortgage, buys groceries, maybe buys a Hayabusa (of course not all with the commission from one sale). Some of the money goes to pay property taxes the dealership owes, which in turn helps pay the salaries of local teachers, police officers (you, Rev
), and fire fighters. Sales taxes and registration fees help the state and county provide services and jobs for residents.
The cycle continues, and the original car loan, which is made up of the 90% of deposit funds that banks aren't required to keep on hand, provides employment and value to a lot of people by the time it stops circulating in the economy.
But now there is no lending. Banks can't reconcile their balance sheets, and many are undercapitalized with no ability to call in loans made to borrowers. That new car sits on the dealer's lot providing no value to anyone. Velocity slows to a crawl.
Now people who have jobs and good credit can't get loans...period. This makes an already weak housing market even weaker because there effectively are no buyers for properties on the market.
Property values start to fall. This is pretty simple really. If you had to sell your Hayabusa right now, you'd probably have to accept less money for it than it was worth when the economy was good and money was circulating more rapidly. Is your bike actually worth less? Depends how badly you need to sell...because if you aren't willing to sell for what the market is willing to pay, you aren't going to sell it. Here's a perfect example of "where did the money go" on a microscopic scale. Every one of us who owns a Hayabusa...or any motorcycle for that matter, has taken a bit of a loss on the value of the asset simply because money is not moving at the same velocity through the economy that it was in the recent past.
Let me see if I can get more up....