There is a strong argument to be made that central banks underestimated the efficiency of the transmission channel between accommodative policies and financial markets while simultaneously overestimating the efficiency of the transmission channel between those same financial markets and the real economy.
That’s from a piece we did for DealBreaker a couple of months back and the point there is that the policy response to the crisis has effectively served to exacerbate the wealth divide in America.
Although this isn’t a perfect way to visualize the excerpted passage above, it does a decent job of getting the point across:
Obviously, central banks were acutely aware that flooding the market with $15 trillion in liquidity would inflate the value of financial assets. The assumption – or so it seems – was that the fabled “wealth effect” would reflate the real economy in relatively short order, and thus the benefits of ultra-accommodative policies would quickly “trickle down”.
Of course that’s not what happened.
Instead, corporations took advantage of the hunt for yield fostered by ZIRP, NIRP, and QE by implementing debt-funded buybacks, the effect of which was to turbocharge the equity market rally.
Well, guess what? This:
And also this:
Because financial assets including and especially equities are overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of the rich, the longer policies that inflate those assets take to trickle down, the wider the wealth divide gets.
Relatedly – and this is important – the longer the trickle-down lag, the longer the policies stay in place because after all, those policies were ostensibly designed to reflate the real economy and once you’re pot-committed (which central banks were a long time ago), you can’t very well throw in the towel and say the effort has been a failure. Rather, you’ve got to keep accommodative policies in place until growth and inflation finally tick up. Again, the longer those policies are in place, the wider becomes the divide between those who are disproportionately benefiting from financial asset price inflation and those who aren’t.
Note what’s implicit in the above. Namely: this is not a linear dynamic. And that nonlinearity runs all the way up the proverbial totem pole. Here’s how Salient’s Ben Hunt recently explained this:
The goodies of a trebled stock market aren’t evenly distributed. Who owns stocks? If we’re talking about households, leaving aside pension funds and endowments and other institutional investors, it’s the rich, mostly. And that household share of the Central Bankers’ Bubble doesn’t increase linearly with wealth, but exponentially, meaning that the really rich own a lot more stocks than the merely rich, so the really rich have gotten a lot richer than the merely rich.
It should go without saying that the GOP tax plan is going to make this worse. For one thing, corporations are going to use repatriated cash to buy back more shares and otherwise reward capital.
But the more overt “fuck you” to the middle class and to low income Americans comes courtesy of simple math, which shows that by 2027, households bringing in more than $1 million (the top 0.6% of filers) will be getting 81.8% of the benefits from Trump’s tax plan.
Now with all of the above in mind, consider the following chart from Pavlina Tcherneva:
Any questions?
As far as how this ends, allow William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO, to explain it to you in no uncertain terms:
This is the last time they can get away with it, because the backlash is going to be huge. In the end, the trend toward inequality amounts to capitalist suicide. Businesses can’t create themselves, they respond to general growth in income. Inequality chokes off business development.
Grab the torches and the pitchforks.
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The corruption in all facets of our economic doomsday trump/republican future means that the more you grab now the harder it will be to pry out of your cold dead hands.
Don’t discount the clever use of panem et circenses
Well I woke up this morning
On the wrong side of the bed
And how I got to thinkin’
About all those things you said
About ordinary people
And how they make you sick
And if callin’ names kicks back on you
Then I hope this does the trick
‘Cause I’m sick of your complainin’
About how many bills
And I’m sick of all your bitchin’
‘Bout your poodles and your pills
And I just can’t see no humor
About your way of life
And I think I can do more for you
With this here fork and knife
Eat the rich
There’s only one thing that they are good for
Eat the rich
Take one bite now – come back for more
Eat the rich
I gotta get this off my chest
Eat the rich
Take one bite now – spit out the rest
So I called up my head shrinker
And I told him what I’d done
He said you best go on a diet
Yeah, I hope you have some fun
And a don’t go burst the bubble
On rich folks who get rude
‘Cause you won’t get in no trouble
When you eats that kinda food
Now they’re smokin’ up their junk bonds
And then they go get stiff
And they’re dancin’ in the yacht club
With muff and uncle biff
But there’s one good thing that happens
When you toss your pearls to swine
Their attitudes may taste like shit
But go real good with wine
Eat the rich
There’s only one thing that they are good for
Eat the rich
Take one bite now – come back for more
Eat the rich
I gotta get this off my chest
Eat the rich
Take one bite now – spit out the rest
Believe in all the good things
That money just can’t buy
Then you won’t get no bellyache
From eatin’ humble pie
I believe in rags to riches
Your inheritance won’t last
So take your gray poupon my friend
And shove it up your ass
Eat the rich
There’s only one thing that they are good for
Eat the rich
Take one bite now – come back for more
Eat the rich
I gotta get this off my chest
Eat the rich
Take one bite now – spit out the rest
Eat the rich
There’s only one thing that they are good for
Eat the rich
Take one bite now – come back for more
Eat the rich
Don’t stop me now, I’m goin’ crazy
Eat the rich
That’s my idea of a good time baby
Hoowhee – that’s going back to when Steve had a voice.
But I agree.
The farmer has traded in his pitchfork for an AR-15. When the government announced that it had developed a neutron bomb that left buildings intact while killing people, I saw the writing on the wall. These suckers will stop at nothing to hold onto the loot.
Good read, but a better title than, “What’s wrong with this chart” would have been, “Just in: actual data on SEC’s 1982 experiment to allow stock buybacks.”
In fact, the effects of the SEC’s issuance of 10b-18 in 1982 have been devastating to corporate productivity and, subsequently, living standards. This single SEC action basically freed America’s C suite and boardroom denizens to play with cap ratios in rewarding themselves in comp plans…and they have. Instead of running huge risks driving R&D, capital expenditures, etc., in slogging it out in the competitive trenches of the free market, most have opted to simply use the artificially low rates to buy back their stock…because they can, as Slick Willie said..