Where is all that M3?

Discussion in 'Economics' started by ShoeshineBoy, Apr 24, 2008.

  1. I realized I don't understand something very basic. Right now we're having a credit crisis - that's no big secret. Corporations struggle to get "loans" and consumers even more so. Yet we know that Helic. Ben has been injecting massive amounts into the money supply.

    So where is that money going? Are the banks just sitting on it?
     
  2. These are NOT permanent injections into the Money Supply. They are REPOS good for a week to 28 days.
     
  3. Okay, but if you look at M2, etc., it's growing at a steady clip, right?

    Notice that this link

    http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SuperModels/AsLoansDryUpSoWillEconomy.aspx

    says basically what I'm asking:

    "Credit is the fuel of industry, and it is a vanishing resource despite a campaign of unprecedented swiftness by the Federal Reserve to slash short-term interest rates. As it disappears from the landscape, so, too, will hopes of a broad, lasting recovery"

    "Yet banks' egregious greed and misdeeds of the past few years have made credit dry up, and so they're keeping what they can get to themselves. "

    Why would banks keep it to themselves? Is this saying that they are basically not putting the money into the system and are just sitting on it??
     
  4. S&P Futures
     
  5. That money has already been consumed during the past years.
     
  6. ??
     
  7. Yes.
     
  8. C'mon! You're saying that large, money center banks are acting rationally?? :)

    No, if what you said is true, then we should start seeing a contraction of M2 soon, right?