No, ‘Americans’ Didn’t Get $34 Trillion Richer During Pandemic
Earlier this week, one widely-followed reporter at a mainstream financial media outlet took to Twitter to trumpet the latest Fed data on US household net worth.
Americans, this person exclaimed, are 31% richer since the onset of the pandemic, having seen the value of various assets, including stocks and real estate, balloon by more than $34 trillion over six quarters.
Invariably, he received the usual sarcastic pushback from the habitually cynical world of finance-focused social media.
The ir
“In fact, if you’re a sentient being who’s able to live your life largely free of suffering, you’re an anomaly.”
there’s only one thing on my refrigerator door — a sticky note with that written on it
Looking forward to a memento mori in the merch store
liked your upside down Laugh, Mr. H. – saw it first and thought “this one should be interesting…”and of course your effort didn’t disappoint…
Which is why I will spend the rest of my life sharing what I have with those who are suffering. In spite of my advanced age and declining health, I still qualify as an anomaly, while billions still can’t even get a safe drink of water.
well said and done, take care, Mr. L. – stay positive and persevere…
Tnak you for this lucid editorial. Bullshit is in surplus wherever I turn….
As a semi-sentient being my primary survival strategy has been to be wary of the Exception and take shelter in the dominate Rule of the Norm. Not that it isn’t interesting to observe the exceptions getting picked off “proving” the Rule, but, the statistics are not that difficult to comprehend, so I stick with the Rule, except in truly exceptional circumstances. Yet now, if I’m to believe what I’ve just read, I’m the new anomaly because I accepted early on that the wisdom of the Rule was more perilous to ignore than to understand? With every thing I read I try to remember the publisher of news is under relentless pressure to dangle shiny things to attract the attention of readers oddly predisposed to give more weight to the exception rather than study the life-giving rules/norms in which they are immersed. Once we step out of our tiny circle(s) of competence we are like the fish that never gives a thought about the water or the bird that doesn’t ponder the air…. It is hard to fathom the Federal Reserve banks, manned by seven figure active stock traders, didn’t anticipate the liquidity they injected into corporations they were inflating and trading wasn’t just going to get pumped back out directly into the tax-sheltered loopholy wealth-hiding blackboxes in South Dakota, Nevada, etc. of Majority shareholders on it’s passage through the bowels of Wallstreet into the Private Equity funds that are undermining the American fever dream of home ownership. So hard to fathom it strains and snaps credulity. ROC on dudes “and so shall it ever be”! Until it isn’t. Someone said, “tipping points are invisible”, but, at least we can watch the seesaw get loaded up. Come to think of it, that is probably why I’m here.
One of Jerry Seinfeld’s kis asked him “Dad, are we rich?” The reply, “Well, I’m rich but you’re not.”