Why Stocks, Crypto, and Home Values Are All Plunging at Once
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
And interest rates, devoid of any true monetary policy, creates a damned-if-you-do and dammed-if-you-don’t situation for the lower 90% of wealth owners.
The government wasted 10 years of free money by not investing in infrastructure and the clean energy transition. Instead we got 10 years of 1% loans to corporations and billionaires to do stock buybacks. The fed can only lead the horse to water, but if there is a filibuster the horse will never drink.
On a side note: it’s news to me that home values have plunged. A market softening for sure, but a plunge in sale prices? Not in my metro area. Plus a 20% plunge doesn’t mean much when home prices are up 20% yoy
That's not necessarily true. I mean yes, he could, but to do that he'd have to sell a chunk of Facebook shares. He doesn't have $16bn sitting in a big warehouse piled up with mountains of dollar bills, or in a checking account. The $16bn is the notional value of him controlling Facebook, and he still wants to control Facebook.
The way to leverage that into wealth without selling shares is to take a loan out with the shares as collateral, but that's just essentially a Mortgage again collateralised against the shares instead of the house.
I mean, I want to buy things and have the numbers in my accounts go up too. It's not outrageous that when you get some things you have to sell some of your other things.
Sure, well off people should pay more tax, that's fine. Advocate for tax reform, sure. But I find this kind of mean spirited jabbing at basic rights just such a miserable attitude. It's not as if this particular point really makes any meaningful difference anyway.
It's not even got anything to do with the rest of the article at all, which by the way is grossly factually incorrect. Home ownership in the USA isn't not a "small share of Americans", home ownership rates in the US are at 65%. Vast swathes of Americans do participate in the investment markets through their pensions. US pension funds now account for about 60% of assets in the P22 largest markets, and pension funds account for about 1/4 of all assets under management globally.
When the economy booms, it's 'stock market gains mostly went to the wealthy'. When it crashes, it's 'the poorest are hurt most by unemployment'.
Or to take the interest rate example: high rates = unaffordable mortgages, low rates = high asset prices. No matter what happens, one can always write an article about 'X increasing wealth disparity'.
In a sense they are correct, in that having money allows one to take advantage no matter which way the economy bends... But I am pretty sure there is an unwritten rule that articles must always have a bit of evil, plotting, Mr. Burns-esque element.