Comments on: Total Assets of the U.S. Economy $188 Trillion, 13.4xGDP

By: To the United States of America, were you aware of the fact that you owe $13,169,998,142.09+ @ 14.05.2010? | Economic theory

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:22:57 +0000

[...] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_…http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/…http://rutledgecapital.com/2009/05/24/to…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stat… [...]

By: American Banks Dumping Dollars for the Yen

American Banks Dumping Dollars for the Yen — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:51:45 +0000

[...] cars, computers, phones, ect is our wealth which far exceeds our GDP at about $200 trillion. http://rutledgecapital.com/2009/05/2…llion-134xgdp/ So even if we have a couple years where we spend a % or two of our GDP ( which would be about 14 [...]

By: John Visser

John Visser — Thu, 27 May 2010 03:04:10 +0000

John:
Thank you. I like what you are doing and I think it is important work. But I wonder if your numbers are too big because
1) One person, company or government’s financial asset is someone else’s liability, so at least when we are talking about debt, the effect on net worth is a wash (even thought debt can make the economy much more productive when it gets money into the hands of the most productive people/entites), and
2) Companies hold real assets (and financial assets) on the left side of their balance sheets, but the value of these assets is captured in the value of the companies’s stock since going concern value will generally be greater than book value. Hence it would seem that we should not count tangible assets owned by companies if we are already including the value of stocks when computing the financial assets of households. Since It seems to me you would want to value companies as going concerns, perhaps it would be best just to leave the tangible assets of these kinds of intermediaries out of the total.
Hope you find these comments helpful.

By: Our Government: A Business Without Assets? | Brucenomics

Our Government: A Business Without Assets? | Brucenomics — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:45:56 +0000

[...] Source: Dr. John Rutledge quotes are from his blog article, Total Assets of the U.S. Economy $188 Trillion, 13.4xGDP [...]

By: Principles of Circular Valuation « A Reasonable Life

Principles of Circular Valuation « A Reasonable Life — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:31:15 +0000

[...] namely just how our collective balance sheet is looking at the moment. As before, a very good reference article for this discussion has been presented by John Rutledge, which concludes that total US assets [...]

By: We Owe it to Ourselves « A Reasonable Life

We Owe it to Ourselves « A Reasonable Life — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:15:39 +0000

[...] will either be met or modified. The underlying truth is that, by comparison to our total assets, estimated to be in the range of $188 trillion, a realistic measure of our liabilities of some $164 trillion is perilously close to technical [...]

By: Symmetry Capital Management, LLC » Strange Comments from Steve Wynn

Symmetry Capital Management, LLC » Strange Comments from Steve Wynn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:51:11 +0000

[...] http://rutledgecapital.com/2009/05/24/total-assets-of-the-us-economy-188-trillion-134xgdp/ [...]

By: Bret Swanson - Maximum Entropy » Blog Archive » Don’t forget asset markets

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:10:31 +0000

[...] the crash in GDP, or income, John Rutledge reminds us about the also falling but still massive balance sheet, or assets, of the U.S. Why is it that [...]