The vast majority of $100 bills are abroad, not in the United States. So yes, of course there's a use here but nowhere near as much as there's a use for $100 bills abroad.

Actually, high housing prices don't help the economy. They raise the cost of living.

You have a choice. Either you can have more oil, or more clean water. Fracking is not good for the water supply.

That's the problem with the financial sector. Banks and the financial sector live in the short run, not the long run. In principle the government is supposed to make regulations that help the economy over time. But once it's taken over by the financial sector, the government lives in the short run too.

When people are running up more and more debt for housing, they call that "real wealth." It exposes what's wrong in the mainstream economics and why most of the economics that justifies austerity programs and economic shrinkage is in the textbooks is not scientific. Junk economics denies the role of debt and denies the fact that the economic system we have now is dysfunctional.

Economists often define their discipline as "the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends." But when resources or money really become scarce, economists call it a crisis and say that it's a question for politicians, not their own department.

There are so many currency exchange rate problems that people are buying gold as a safe haven. Right now, gold looks like a safe haven if international exchange rates break down.