This week our focus is on the wealth gap in the US. The chart below, courtesy of
Ben Hunt at Epsilon Theory, shows where the money is. It compares the household wealth of the top 0.1% to that of the bottom 90%.
The turning point was after the 1987 Crash. Since then the wealth of the bottom 90% has fallen from over 35% to less than 24% today. In contrast, the wealth of the top 0.1% of the population (that's 326,000 people out of the total population of 326 million) has risen from less than 10% to nearly 25% of household wealth.
We can’t blame Donald Trump for that. Rather, actions by central banks have helped to push wealth into the hands of the wealthy. Quantitative easing after 2007/8 is just the most recent example of central banks driving stock markets higher benefitting the asset rich top 0.1%.
Solving this problem is a great challenge that leaders have so far failed to address in any meaningful way.