With all this money being pumped into various markets, I've been noodling on how to best model monetary flows as a software application. In my imagination, said model would enable us to see how money flows through the world-wide economic system... but let's start with USD: - How money flows from US goods out of the country, such as the total spent on Chinese goods, which was re-invested into US Treasuries, on which interest was paid, and re-invested... into more treasuries... - Fed Covid money... where did it go? 10T worth? - How does money enter and exit the system? Does it end up under peoples' mattresses? How many dollars are flowing out into other currencies, as they are exchanged for the "New Gold" of US dollars as a store of wealth? - What is the flow of unaccounted-for money, such as that sitting in stale accounts for years? I'm thinking of an actual program where these flows can be easily viewed, and animated. A utopian stretch would be a real-time data-driven model, but for now I'd realistically settle for flows in the billions at a 10000-foot level. An associated question would be what data structure would be used to house this behemoth. Is this basically one big-@$$ finite-state machine? Anyone know if such an application exists? Perhaps flow models from another discipline--such as modeling flows of electricity or water--can be employed? Is there a software framework adapted for monetary flow modeling and viewing? A data modeling framework? I imagine that much time and money has been invested into proprietary software like this at hedge funds, investment banks, etc., but is anything publicly available?
as far as data structure, weighted directed graph. you could search for combinatorial networks for ideas
Hahaha. Yes, it would be nice to know in detail where the private sector money is, what form it is in, and how it got there. Hayek tried to do what you suggest on a more modest scale in a more modest world without computers of course, and failed of course. Then along came Keynes and said we'll never get anywhere with that approach, let's just look at the big picture and try to understand that.
And now there is this below, which is reminiscent of Hayek's crazy diagrams of arrows and interlocking circles. Hayek worked on a micro scale thinking he could then somehow put the pieces (his diagrams) together the way a jigsaw puzzle goes together to show a grand picture of Niagara Falls...