If the economy is growing, people want to employ more workers. If you hire more labor, wages go up.

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.

In fact, there's no way that banks can be paid everything that they're owed.

The problems of 2008 were never cured. The Federal Reserve's solution to the crisis was to lend the economy enough money to borrow its way out of debt. It thought that if it could subsidize banks lending homeowners enough money to buy houses from people who are defaulting, then the bank balance sheets would end up okay.

People think that this concept of GDP is scientific economics, partly because it has a precise number and can be quantified. But the underlying concept of "the market" makes it appear as if today's poverty is natural. It makes it appear that Goldman Sachs and Donald Trump are job creators instead of job destroyers. That is illogical, when you think about it.

We're still in the collapse that began after 2008. There's not a new collapse, there hasn't been a recovery.

The financial time frame always has been short-term. Projects with long-term paybacks are cut back, because CEOs and financial managers simply want to take their money and run. That is the financial mentality.