. @ByrneHobart had this in his newsletter, the last sentence of which is very relevant to the relative size of Tether’s claimed reserves and the commercial paper market. 
I’d phrase it as this: “Ponzi schemes have an unbridled urge to expand, and eventually the expansion of the fake books is so large that it should produce a visible change outside those books, but does not. This fact is often noticed casually by someone uninterested in scheme.”
Even the smallest businesses create ripples in the outside world, and are very detectable if one knows what to look for, but Ponzi schemes describe themselves as roiling tsunami generators than fail to measure up to that.
(Satoshi schemes also have this property.)
(Satoshi schemes also have this property.)
Speaking of ripples in the outside world: a great set of documents, still available if you Google well, is the IRS’ set of guides for examiners working with businesses in various industries.
They detail how to e.g. estimate revenue of a laundromat w/ poor books, from water bill.
They detail how to e.g. estimate revenue of a laundromat w/ poor books, from water bill.
Does that use the water bill because water is critical input into laundries? Yes, but that’s a partial answer. The other half of the answer is that one’s water supplier is trivially guessable and will absolutely reply to correspondence from an IRS examiner with detailed records.
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