It's not vanity, because governments have dugged themselves into a hole where pension funds and others have invested enormous amounts of money in equities (seeing as bond returns are non-existent due to the aforementioned stimulus) as well as venture capital. Allowing the market to reset and recalibrate itself would also mean wiping out a lot of pensions as well as investments from wealthy donors, which is bad for votes.

The sad thing is that this erroneous monetary policy will only stop if politicians and central bankers are willing to stomach a harsh market recalibration, but seeing as they seem to not be willing to do that judging from their recent actions so I fear that this systemic malinvestment and inequality will just get worse and worse until something breaks.