How this was built

Where every dollar came from

• Levels at the end of June 2026 from the Federal Reserve's Financial Accounts (Z.1, released 11 September 2026). Holdings are shown as Z.1 reports them, mostly at market value. Z.1 has renumbered its tables (L.210 is now F3.2.s); the new codes are used here.
• Federal debt adds Social Security, Medicare and other trust-fund holdings from Treasury's Monthly Statement of the Public Debt ($4.5T beyond the federal pension funds Z.1 already counts). Foreign claims and the net position come from BEA's international investment position.
• Fed money is currency, bank reserves, the Treasury's account and other deposits at the Fed, and the Fed's reverse repos. Deposits are credited to bank lending because a bank loan creates a deposit; the loans behind them appear on the right under Banks.
• The money & intermediary layer (Fed money, deposits, money-fund shares, agency MBS & GSE debt, repo, and financial firms' bonds and commercial paper) sits on top of other assets. Turning it off removes that double count.
• Homes & property covers real estate of households and nonprofits plus property owned outside corporations (partnerships, LLCs, landlords), at market value. Its value is split between owners' equity and the mortgages owed against it; mortgage holders are apportioned by their share of all mortgages. Corporate and REIT property is not added again because its value sits inside company stocks.
• Buildings are the replacement cost of the structures (Z.1 S1M.b and S11.2.b: $42.8T); land value is the rest of the market value ($29.0T, 40%).
• US company stocks are US operating companies, public and closely held ($92.7T); fund wrappers such as ETFs, and foreign stocks, are excluded. Company net worth uses the Fed's ratio of equity to net worth for nonfinancial companies (242% in June 2026); the premium is the rest. Measured against the S&P 500's accounting book value instead (price-to-book 5.3 in September 2025), the premium would be about 81%.
• Offshore dollar credit is the BIS estimate of dollar loans and bonds of borrowers outside the US. The US-held share is estimated from Z.1's foreign bonds held by US residents, whose currency mix is not published.
• Left out: pension entitlements, life insurance and mutual-fund shares (their assets appear under the institutions that hold them), trade credit, and the dollars owed in FX swaps and forwards. BIS put those at $85T in mid-2022; the same method gives about $114T at end-2025. They are obligations to deliver dollars later, not balance-sheet holdings.

How $1.9 quadrillion settles

• The $1.9 quadrillion is the 2025 value of the Fed's own services: Fedwire Funds, Fedwire Securities, the National Settlement Service, FedACH, Fed check services and FedNow. They settle separately, so adding them counts no settlement twice.
• CLS, CHIPS and DTCC's NSCC clear first and settle only their net positions at the Fed: CHIPS and CLS through Fedwire Funds, NSCC through NSS. Their gross value is shown flowing to "Netted away"; the switch removes it, leaving only what the Fed settles.
• CHIPS sources are estimates. FX trades settled outside CLS and outside banking groups: BIS 2025 survey (gross bilateral $1.4T a day plus $0.34T left after bilateral netting) × the dollar share of legs (44.55%) × 250 days, all assigned to CHIPS. Eurodollar loans: NY Fed overnight bank funding volume less fed funds, lent and repaid. The Clearing House's 95% cross-border figure counts payments; the same share is assumed for value.
• Fedwire Funds sources: fed funds (twice the NY Fed's $25.5T volume), CHIPS funding (about $96B a day in and out) and CLS dollar pay-ins and pay-outs (about $36B a day each way) are measured or estimated. The Fed publishes no purpose split for the remaining $1,031T; it says most value is bank-to-bank and most payments by count are customer transfers.
• NSS sources: NSCC and DTC net settlement estimated at 2% of NSCC's value cleared; the rest is EPN (private ACH), FICC funds-only and MBS cash, and check clearinghouses. FICC processed $3,284T of Treasury and repo trades in 2025; its net deliveries settle inside Fedwire Securities and are not drawn separately. RTP ($1.45T) is omitted because its funding over Fedwire is not published.
• FedACH commercial value is split by Nacha's 2025 network mix; checks 76/24 business/consumer (Fed Payments Study, 2021).

Where GDP comes from

• Calendar-2025 values from BEA's annual update of 30 September 2026. Industry value added and its split into pay, production taxes and operating surplus come from BEA's GDP-by-industry tables; spending detail from the national accounts (NIPA Tables 1.1.5, 2.3.5, 2.4.5, 3.9.5 and 5.3.5); income from Table 1.10.
• Industry value added sums to GDP. Imports are added on the left and exports appear on the right, so both sides balance: GDP plus imports equals what consumers, businesses, government and foreign customers buy ($35.1T).
• The middle columns are totals. The chart does not say which industry's output ends in which purchase; that needs BEA's input-output tables.
• Farms and government receive $63bn more in subsidies than they pay in production taxes, so their pay and operating surplus are scaled down to their value added. The column totals therefore differ slightly from BEA's published totals, which the tooltips give.
• Inflation-adjusted GDP is BEA's real GDP (chained 2017 dollars) rescaled to 2025 prices. GDP first passed $20T in 2018: $20.5T in the first estimate, $20.7T in today's revised data.

How this was built

Where every yuan came from

• Levels at 31 December 2025 from the People's Bank of China's statistical tables, the bond custody statistics of ChinaBond and Shanghai Clearing House, and the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges. Bonds are at face value; shares at market value.
• The central bank's liabilities are split between two origins in proportion to its assets: 47% foreign exchange and gold, 53% loans to banks and government bonds.
• Bond holders come from custody tables by investor type. Bank wealth products, funds, trusts and asset-management plans are shown as funds and other finance; policy banks are counted with banks; the central bank's ¥2.2T of government bonds comes from its own balance sheet. Bonds held on the exchanges are spread by the exchanges' combined holder mix.
• Business loans are bank loans to enterprises and public institutions, plus entrusted loans, trust loans and renminbi loans from abroad. They include local government financing vehicles, where the ¥6.5T of officially recognised hidden debt sits.
• No official table shows who owns listed shares. Tradable shares are split using a Huaxi Securities estimate for the third quarter of 2025: controlling and corporate shareholders 40%, individuals 34%, domestic institutions 23%. Non-tradable shares are assigned to controlling shareholders. Foreign holdings are the PBoC's figure. Net worth and premium use the Shanghai Composite's price-to-book ratio of 1.46.
• Urban homes use a Huachuang Securities estimate for the end of 2025: about ¥190T at second-hand listing prices. Estimates differ widely; the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences put urban and rural housing at ¥268T in 2022. Mortgages are banks' personal housing loans; Housing Provident Fund loans are not included. Urban land is state-owned, and no source separates land-use rights from buildings.
• Left out: bank wealth-management products (¥33T), public funds (¥38T), private funds (¥22T), trusts and insurance policies, whose assets appear under the institutions that hold them; unlisted companies and the state's holdings in state-owned enterprises; rural housing; and foreign-currency deposits and loans.

How ¥9,452T settles

• Values are calendar 2025 from the People's Bank of China's annual payment system report. The headline counts its own systems: HVPS (¥8,965T), BEPS (¥206T) and IBPS (¥281T).
• Bond and repo settlement is an upper estimate at face value: CCDC's settlement with both repo legs (¥3,074T) plus Shanghai Clearing House's gross clearing with repo return legs (about ¥958T). Interbank lending is counted twice, lent and repaid. The rest of HVPS has no published purpose.
• UnionPay, NetsUnion and the regional clearing systems settle only their net positions through HVPS. CIPS settles on its own books against a prefunded account at the central bank. Their net and funding amounts are not published, so their full value is shown as never reaching the PBoC's systems.
• ChinaClear, which clears stock-exchange trades, settles through commercial banks. Its totals are from financial-media reports of its 2025 statistics.
• Banks' internal systems (¥2,249T) and the domestic foreign-currency payment system are not drawn.

Where GDP comes from

• 2025 at current prices from the National Bureau of Statistics' preliminary accounts (January and February 2026). Industry value added sums to GDP.
• Other services (¥24.7T) are split into public administration, education, health, science and other services by 2023 proportions.
• Each industry's split between pay, taxes and profits uses its shares in the 2023 input-output table.
• Household consumption is split by the 2025 household survey's spending shares, and fixed investment by the 2023 input-output table. Exports and imports are from the balance of payments; the statistics bureau publishes only the net, ¥5.85T.
• Inflation-adjusted GDP uses the bureau's real GDP index, rescaled to 2025 prices.

How this was built

Where every euro came from

• Levels at the end of March 2026 from the ECB's quarterly sector accounts (who-to-whom tables, released 27 July 2026), for the 21 countries now in the euro area. Securities are at market value.
• Holdings within the same sector are left out: deposits between banks (€6.6T), loans between companies (€6.0T) and government debt held by governments (€1.7T).
• Money market funds are grouped with banks as holders, as in the ECB accounts.
• Mortgages are bank loans for house purchase plus loans held by securitisation vehicles. Homes are household housing wealth; the ECB publishes land only for households.
• Listed shares are split into net worth and premium using the MSCI EMU price-to-book ratio (2.29). Unlisted equity (€40.6T) is left out: most of it is positions inside company groups and holding companies, and no holder breakdown is published.
• Offshore euro credit is the BIS estimate of euro loans and bonds of non-bank borrowers outside the euro area; its holders are not published and are shown as foreign.
• Left out: insurance and pension claims (€10.6T) and investment fund shares (€20.2T), whose assets appear under the institutions that hold them; and derivatives.

How €775T settles

• T2, T2S and TIPS values are calendar 2025 from the ECB's TARGET Services Annual Report. They are separate and add up. The T2 split by payment type applies the published shares to the annual total.
• Settlement for other systems (17.2% of T2) covers EURO1, retail clearing systems, clearing houses and CLS. Only CLS is separated, as an estimate: 4% of the €304T of euro legs it settled.
• The gross values of EURO1 (€39T) and retail clearing systems (€54T) are not drawn, because the net amounts they settle in T2 are not published.
• The €234T of non-cash payments made by customers is the same activity seen from the customer side, not an extra layer.

Where GDP comes from

• 2025 at current prices from Eurostat (updated 2 October 2026) for the 20 countries in the euro area in 2025; Bulgaria joined in 2026.
• Each industry's value added is split into pay and the rest. The rest is operating surplus and self-employment income, plus €0.12T of other production taxes that Eurostat does not split by industry.
• Imports and exports are trade with countries outside the euro area (ECB balance of payments). A €105bn balancing item reconciles this with the national accounts.
• Household spending by category is the 2024 pattern scaled to the 2025 total; 2025 detail is not yet published.

How this was built

Where every pound came from

• Levels at the end of 2025 from the ONS UK Economic Accounts (30 September 2026), the ONS National Balance Sheet and Bank of England statistics. Securities are at market value.
• Deposits are sterling M4 less cash held by the public. Sterling deposits of non-residents and other banks are not published separately and are left out.
• ONS reports the Bank of England together with commercial banks. The Bank's gilt holding is estimated as that combined figure less banks' own gilt positions.
• Corporate and bank bonds, and business loans, include amounts in other currencies; ONS does not split them by currency.
• Homes are household dwellings plus household land. The value is split between owners' equity and mortgages, with lenders shown pro rata.
• UK company shares come entirely from company net worth: ONS values non-financial companies' shares at 67% of their assets less debt, so there is no stock-market premium. Company-owned property sits inside share values and is not added again.
• Left out: pension entitlements (£2.4T), life insurance (£0.6T) and fund units (£1.9T), whose assets appear under the institutions that hold them; and derivatives.

How £207T settles

• CHAPS is the 2025 annual value. CREST cash settlement and the retail net settlements are published daily averages multiplied by 253 settlement days.
• CREST settles £1,064bn of securities a day but only £434bn of cash moves at the Bank; the difference is shown as netted away.
• CLS sterling pay-ins are not published. They are estimated at 2% of the £122T settled and taken out of the CHAPS bank-to-bank figure.
• Visa and Mastercard net settlement (£0.92T) is shown without a gross figure: their UK gross values are not published separately.
• The Bank publishes CHAPS by payment type (bank-to-bank or customer) but not by economic purpose.

Where GDP comes from

• 2025 at current prices from the ONS Quarterly National Accounts of 30 September 2026. Industry gross value added plus taxes less subsidies on products equals GDP; a £4.6bn balancing item is included with product taxes.
• Each industry's split between pay, profits and production taxes uses 2023 shares, the latest published; the 2025 split is an estimate.
• The middle columns are totals. The chart does not say which industry's output ends in which purchase.

How this was built

How the comparison works

• Every figure comes from the four atlases. Open a currency tab for its sources, dates and estimates.
• Dollar amounts use 2025 average exchange rates from the Federal Reserve: $1 = ¥7.1875, €1 = $1.1306, £1 = $1.3192. GDP and settlement are for 2025. Claims are at each economy's latest date: the end of June 2026 (US), the end of March 2026 (euro area) and the end of 2025 (China and the UK).
• The claims mapped differ in scope. Company shares include unlisted companies in the US and UK but only listed shares in China and the euro area. Homes are household homes, except in the US atlas, which adds property owned outside corporations; the home-value measures here use household homes for all four. The UK leaves out sterling deposits of non-residents.
• China's home value and household net worth are brokerage estimates for the end of 2025, and its home value cannot be split into land and buildings. Its income shares are from the 2024 accounts.
• Government debt is at face value but defined differently: US federal debt held by the public plus state and local bonds; China's central and local government debt, excluding ¥6.5T of officially recognised hidden debt; euro-area general government debt; UK gilts, Treasury bills and National Savings.
• Settlement counts each central bank's own systems: Fedwire, the National Settlement Service, FedACH, checks and FedNow; HVPS, BEPS and IBPS; T2, T2S and TIPS; CHAPS, CREST cash settlement and retail net settlement. China's bond trades settle in HVPS, and the securities share shown for it is an upper estimate.
• Euro-area exports and imports are trade with countries outside the euro area. Investment is gross fixed investment including government investment; government consumption excludes it.