Recommended: What Happened To All Of That Money?

Jeffrey Snider has an interesting, if a bit abstruse, article on RealClear Markets: What Happened To All Of That Money?  His question - a good one - is this: since the central banks of the world have "created" (printed) all this new money and supposedly put it into circulation, why hasn't the world economy recovered better?  Where has all that money gone? 

His answer is that there is now a lack of real wealth in the world, of "good"assets. All this "new" paper money, he argues, can't change the fact that real wealth is simply down.  An alternative answer might be that there are fundamental structural changes going on (including the hollowing out of the middle class, who are the main drivers of consumption), and just creating more paper money out of thin air does nothing to address these changes.

His writing is not the easiest to follow, but it is worth the effort because he is asking a very fundamental question.