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The Great Swindler
Back in April, during Berkshire's first in-person annual meeting since 2019, Warren Buffett described inflation as an equal opportunity swindler.
It swindles equity investors, he said, but it "swindles the bond investor, too." It also "swindles the person who keeps their cash under their mattress." Ultimately, Buffett mused, "it swindles almost everybody."
Of course, just because everyone gets swindled doesn't mean everyone shares the burden of inflation equally. Buffett, for example, is at no
After all, the lowest income quartile is the furthest thing from above water in a financial sense.
And I used to have a lot of feelings for those unfortunate enough to end up there. A fair bit of that good-feelings capital got spent when US consumers went on a spending binge after the third COVID relief bill. In hindsight, it was too generous. That’s Biden’s/our fault. But wouldn’t you save a big chunk of it if, famously, you don’t have $400 to face unexpected bills?