Re: Does Japan's $93 trillion monetary base include their Postal Savings Accounts?

"Bob LeChevalier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> "Christian Party" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> >> The public debt is not relevant, since that is both an asset and a
> >> >> liability: most of the $6 trillion in public debt is owed to people
> >> >> (1/2 trillion in US treasury notes is part of the household assets)
> >> >> and US businesses, which people own.
> >> >
> >> >Yeah, the people own it allright.  The Japanese people, not the
American
> >> >people.
> >>
> >> Nope.  As I broke out elsewhere, almost half of the American debt is
> >> owed to the social security and medicare accounts, and to other
> >> Federal accounts.  See below
> >>
> >> >You were obviously looking right straight at that chart, so you
> >> >obviously did notice that TOTAL US government securities owned by US
> >> >households was only $539 billion in 2001, down 46% in only 5 years.
> >>
> >> And down only trivially in 11 years.  The bond market goes up and
> >> down, just like the stock market.
> >
> >Which ignores the point that American households own a VERY small portion
of
> >the public debt, which refutes your statement that most of this public
debt
> >is owned by "the people" [where it was presumed that you referred to
> >American people, rather than the Japanese people who DO own most of it].
>
> Table 1141 gives how much in government securities are owned by the
> entire foreign sector, which is hardly all Japanese.
>

The most significant part of that statement which you ignored, that less
than 5% of our public debt is now owned by US households, is far, far more
important than your faulty belief that the $1.6 trillion of "Foreign Direct
Investment in the US" in Table 1141 is the only portion of the public debt
owned by foreigners, or the Japanese, or their PSAs.  With $40 to $90
trillion in savings, the Japanese could have set up any number of "American"
companies which they have 100% control of which bought that public debt.

At the least, it should concern even you "liberals" that only 5% is owned by
American households.

> >What you just recognized is the possibility that wild swings in our stock
> >market, wherein stock "values" like Cisco accelerated to 32 times
revenues
> >[which compared to stocks like Fujitsu whose stock value is one fourth of
> >revenue were over-rated by 132 times] were caused by these foreign
> >"investors".
>
> I don't recognize any theory of yours as anything but obnoxium pulled
> out of your strange orifice.
>

Nobody really expected you to comprehend the point.

> >Add to that the mere specter that a 10% drop in housing prices would
cause
> >mortgage debt to exceed the asset value of the underlying real estate,
> >leaving an American citizen in the unenviable position of having a net
worth
> >lower than a Sub-Saharan African in the bush.  This of course ignores the
> >almost $2 trillion in consumer credit which isn't backed by anthing, and
> >which WOULD already put us under water if it were included.
>
> Household financial assets were $90 trillion.  That did not count real
> estate.
>

It's hard to imagine, after it's been laid out so clearly for you, that you
can keep making the same old mistake, over and over and over, again.  Table
1140 shows financial assets of households in 2001 to be only $32 trillion
(not "$90 trillion"), that it dropped almost 10% in only 2 years, and that
only $1.3 trillion is in savings institutions (down 2% in a decade).  None
of these are positive trends, yet most of this drop occurred before the $7.2
trillion fell out of the stock market.  If you took into account even the
most conservative analysis of the 128 fold hyperinflation of stocks like
Cisco and Microsoft and Intel, you'd realize that this $32 trillion is
over-stated by 86%.

Do a sanity check.  If American households really had $90 trillion just in
financial assets, do you think they'd have 30% more in consumer credit than
in savings institutions ($1,688 vs. $1,298)?  Isn't this proof enough that
these allegedly "wealthy" households are living off their credit cards, not
income?  Isn't that an even better barometer than the Bureau of Economic
Analysis who reported that we had a negative personal savings rate--until
the $150 billion "statistical discrepancy" suddenly appeared and increased
savings by $76 billion?
http://members.fortunecity.com/zz8/personalsaving.htm

These are the official figures.  The real numbers are undoubtedly much worse
than that.  Where we over-represent savings figures, the Japanese government
under-represents them.

John Knight