When the American household worth number comes out for 2008 it will be down more than $10 Trillion

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

The figure for the first three quarters is minus $7 trillion and the fourth quarter was the worst so far, so $10 trillion is conservative.

That is $10 trillion that no longer exists. Some people have gotten away with a lot of bad behavior but it's wrong to think of this as a zero-sum game where someone took all the missing money. It's a sub-zero sum game. Most of the money that's been going away isn't being stolen, it has gone to what stock traders sardonically refer to as "money heaven."

The wealth hole is much larger than the output hole. Nobody would propose trying to fill the wealth hole -- that would be both impossible and crazy.

But it's quite a hole nonetheless. And that's why people are not spending. They just lost $10 trillion of money they thought they had.

(No link. A guy who works on the household wealth survey was on TV talking about it.)

[CJCRANE]

1. Can't we just declare the whole world bankrupt

and start again?

:shrug:

[n2doc]

2. Pop went the bubble n/t

[greguganus]

3. Mine went to money hell. n/t