I think the analysis of the Where is the Money story is wrong, what say you?

Most of the stock in the market was not sold, and most of the stock that was sold was not purchased at it peak price. I think the writer would agree with you that a transaction from buyer to seller that causes a gain or loss. and that this money does not disappear However he is pointing out that until a transition takes place there in no exchange of money, and loss calculated from an imaginary transition where the purchases took place at the peak market price and sold at the lowest price available last week does not represent the real .money loss for most people.

Horse hockey! In some instances, like when you pay cash for something, the cash is transferred from buyer to seller. But if you did not sell your house for $500,000 when it was appraised at that, did you lose money when it declines to an appraised value of $300,000? No, you only lost a paper (potential) profit. If you only paid $100,000 for the house, have you lost money selling it at $300K? No, you still make a profit, just not as much as you thought you might at one time.

Do you use a credit card? Is that money? No. You trade electronic blips & bleeps.

The stock market crashes? That value is gone, evaporated into thin air. It did not end up in someone else's pocket. Just like the difference between not selling your house for $500k and instead selling it for $300k. Nobody has the $200k you think you are missing. And you do have your $200K profit over your $100k purchase price.

You are not even understanding what the article is talking about. As the article takes pains to explain (but which you still didn't get), it's not a question of losing MONEY. It's a question of losing some of the value assigned to things that are not money, like houses and stocks. Yes, when you spend money someone else receives it, but that's entirely beside the point. And, money DOES disappear -- that happens when a bank loan is paid off, or when a bank fails.

Actually you can sum it up like this:

Wealth is both created and destroyed,

Value is both created and destroyed,

Money is both created and destroyed.

And those three things are not one and the same thing.