I was reading a book review about Carlos Escobar and it talked about the millions and millions of dollars he had stored in a warehouse and how rats hade eaten about 10% of his money. Which if estimates are correct that would have been close to three hundred million dollars. How does large quantities of U.S. greenbacks landing aboard, outside of banks, some being lost, affect our economy here?

Wait, the guy had three trillion dollars?

Something like only 5-10% of US Currency is actually in printed money. I think there is currently about 1 trillion dollars in actual printed bills out there total...including money in bank vaults, etc...most currency is digital.

Edit: According to the federal reserve, I was close: http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm

If money is "lost" it's basically a gift to the treasury department. Same idea as when people collected coins like the 50 state quarters. If the money is taken off the market, then the treasury received value when they gave it to the bank and they don't have to return that value to anyone.

Sorry, I was in a rush. First it is Pablo and he was worth three billion, not certain how much US currency actually passed through his hands. He had warehouses full of US currency. He spent $30,000 a year on rubber bands to hold the $100 bills together. There were issues with getting it into banks. I ordered the book written by his brother who was his accountant.

Billion makes sense. That would be an interesting book for sure.

I posted a review in the book thread. I'm intrigued by the notion that he arguably did more in charity for his country than the corrupt government did. Now obviously he also caused the death of many people, but he built schools, hospitals, etc.

Al Capone was famous for lots of the same stuff.