[lit-ideas] Re: Quasiness
- From: "Simon Ward" <sedward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:18:10 -0000
Quickly, coz it's time for bed.
This is all about liquidity - says the man with a dodgy kidney - money is not
just cash but any asset that can be converted to cash with little or no cost.
So, money is also current and savings accounts that can be liquified quickly.
It might be shares, though typically they can only be liquidated into current
accounts, or perhaps bonds. Quasi money is therefore something in between money
and an asset that can't be liquidated soon or at a small cost.
To give an example. I asked my father recently whether he's holding stocks or
cash. Thankfully he said the latter, but what he was actually referring to was
an account held for him by his broker, not a hoard of notes under his mattress.
That account might be termed quasi money because it can't, in a short period,
be converted into cash.
The CIA Factbook is saying that the stock of money (hard cash in circulation,
plus accounts that can be cashed in an instant) is about one fifth the size of
the stock of quasi money (however they wish to define it).
Note, this is not the same as leverage ...
Simon
Sleepy after a hard day
----- Original Message -----
From: Julie Krueger
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 9:29 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Quasiness
I have marveled at the odd and crazy money lately -- the trillion dollar
notes, the way the economists talk about money we never had as though it were
real and missing, etc. Well, here's a new one (for me, at least) -- I was
looking up a country on the CIA Factbook page -- you know, where they give all
sorts of stats re. the country -- economy, history, mortality rates, literacy,
etc. In the economics section I discovered this odd couplet --
Stock of money:
$24.2 billion (31 December 2007)
Stock of quasi money:
$117.8 billion (31 December 2007)
Someone please explain to me ... what is "quasi-money"??!?!!
Julie Krueger
mystified & wondering what else "quasi" is out there that I don't know
about...
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