All of the World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization (2022)

All of the World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization

The era of easy money is now officially over.

For 15 years, policymakers have tried to stimulate the global economy through money creation, zero interest-rate policies, and more recently, aggressive COVID fiscal stimulus.

With capital at near-zero costs over this stretch, investors started to place more value on cash flows in the distant future. Assets inflated and balance sheets expanded, and money inevitably chased more speculative assets like NFTs, crypto, or unproven venture-backed startups.

But the free money party has since ended, after persistent inflation prompted the sudden reversal of many of these policies. And as Warren Buffett says, it’s only when the tide goes out do you get to see “who’s been swimming naked.”

Measuring Money and Markets in 2022

Every time we publish this visualization, our common unit of measurement is a two-dimensional box with a value of $100 billion.

Even though you need many of these to convey the assets on the balance sheet of the U.S. Federal Reserve, or the private wealth held by the world’s billionaires, it’s quite amazing to think what actually fits within this tiny building block of measurement:

Our little unit of measurement is enough to pay for the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, while also buying every team in the NHL and digging FTX out of its financial hole several times over.

Here’s an overview of all the items we have listed in this year’s visualization:

Asset category	Value	Source	Notes
SBF (Peak Net Worth)	$26 billion	Bloomberg	Now sits at <$1B
Pro Sports Teams	$340 billion	Forbes	Major pro teams in North America
Cryptocurrency	$760 billion	CoinMarketCap	Peaked at $2.8T in 2021
Ukraine GDP	$130 billion	World Bank	Comparable to GDP of Mississippi
Russia GDP	$1.8 trillion	World Bank	The world's 11th largest economy
Annual Military Spending	$2.1 trillion	SIPRI	2021 data
Physical currency	$8.0 trillion	BIS	2020 data
Gold	$11.5 trillion	World Gold Council	There are 205,238 tonnes of gold in existence
Billionaires	$12.7 trillion	Forbes	Sum of fortunes of all 2,668 billionaires
Central Bank Assets	$28.0 trillion	Trading Economics	Fed, BoJ, Bank of China, and Eurozone only
S&P 500	$36.0 trillion	Slickcharts	Nov 20, 2022
China GDP	$17.7 trillion	World Bank
U.S. GDP	$23.0 trillion	World Bank
Narrow Money Supply	$49.0 trillion	Trading Economics	Includes US, China, Euro Area, Japan only
Broad Money Supply	$82.7 trillion	Trading Economics	Includes US, China, Euro Area, Japan only
Global Equities	$95.9 trillion	WFE	Latest available 2022 data
Global Debt	$300.1 trillion	IIF	Q2 2022
Global Real Estate	$326.5 trillion	Savills	2020 data
Global Private Wealth	$463.6 trillion	Credit Suisse	2022 report
Derivatives (Market)	$12.4 trillion	BIS
Derivatives (Notional)	$600 trillion	BIS

Has the Dust Settled Yet?

Through previous editions of our All the World’s Money and Markets visualization, we’ve created snapshots of the world’s assets and markets at different points in time.

For example, in our 2017 edition of this visualization, Apple’s market capitalization was only $807 billion, and all crypto assets combined for $173 billion. The global debt total was at $215 trillion.

Asset	2017 edition	2022 edition	Change (%)
Apple market cap	$807 billion	$2.3 trillion	+185%
Crypto	$173 billion	$760 billion	+339%
Fed Balance Sheet	$4.5 trillion	$8.7 trillion	+93%
Stock Markets	$73 trillion	$95.9 trillion	+31%
Global Debt	$215 trillion	$300 trillion	+40%

And in just five years, Apple nearly quadrupled in size (it peaked at $3 trillion in January 2022), and crypto also expanded into a multi-trillion dollar market until it was brought back to Earth through the 2022 crash and subsequent FTX implosion.

Meanwhile, global debt continues to accumulate—growing by $85 trillion in the five-year period.

With interest rates expected to continue to rise, companies making cost cuts, and policymakers reining in spending and borrowing, today is another unique snapshot in time.

Now that the easy money era is over, where do things go from here?