‘Americans’ $40 Trillion Richer Since Pandemic, Fed Imagines
American "households" became $5.3 trillion richer during the final three months of 2021 (figure below), Fed data out Thursday suggested.
You'll note the scare quotes around "households." Regular readers know my take on this data. It hasn't changed, nor will it until the distribution of financial assets changes and until nearly all Americans realize the dream of homeownership.
So, in other words, never -- my assessment will never change, because equities will always be concentrated in the hands
Thank you H for the wise , thoughtful and moving comments especially during these times of such realistic and visual atrocities….
A sobering view/reminder amid all the hand-wringing over gasoline prices.
+1
H , thanks for once again showing how out of touch some of the financial press is. The wealthiest 10% own 89% of all the stock. This shows that these gains are primarily going to the rich.
I wonder what the relationship is between wealth and education?. (Where education means acquiring a degree in something along the line of medicine, law, business, engineering etc. where people will pay the big bucks for what you’ve put between your ears.)
Good grief Man (of Lourdes)! Have you not bookmarked Pew Research for at least quarterly scans? Anyway, physicians (lobby: AMA) have been steadily supplying the 1%’s from below for many decades. Scan SSRN (etc) for papers studying anonymized data dumps from investment houses (typically European), of course, the truly wealthy would never consent to any form of data release, and thus, are excluded. That skews the results, masking the true extent of inequality, but, on the bright side it is balm for the egos of those still hanging in the aforementioned data sets by the skin of their caffeine stained dentures.
Excellent post, thank you
The only major asset class that is still mostly owned by ordinary people is houses. Institutional investors have their sights on taking over that asset class. When they succeed, we will truly be a feudal society.
The truly fascinating concept related to this theoretical pile of trillions, is what percent of it is liquid and what isn’t. I’d strongly suggest the Fed not eat their eggs before they hatch due to salmonella…