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Somebody's savings is somebody else's debt. The whole world can't be a net saver, as nice as that would sound.

Sure the whole world can be a net saver. In fact it is, which is one of the reasons the whole world is getting wealthier.

The counterpart of debt is credit, not savings. Having savings is necessary to be a creditor, but it doesn't imply being a creditor.

Unless I am missing something, the only way the whole world can be a net saver would be for for all of us to start exporting goods and services off-planet. Anything else is simply a mirage that obscures currency inflation. :) Which, on a related note, goes eleventy-fold for anything remotely related to derivative instruments.

Bucky Fuller would disagree. Money stands for something—the real wealth of technology and information. As we continue to create and improve quality of life the real amount of capital in the world increases.

I always liked to imagine that, ideally, an inflating currency would proxy for this real wealth-generation, but that doesn't quite seem to be the case.

Anyway, the important thing is that we're not (simply) printing money. The world gets richer.

Net financial assets are zero. Human and physical capital are obviously another thing. The original post wasn't about that.

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