Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Matt Soener's avatar

Finally got around to this. Great piece. Reminded me of a recent paper by Goldstein and Tian which shows there has actually been a decline in the number of financial rentier households during this period across most countries. One of the biggest reasons they find is lower interest rates (not usually accounted for in the kind of QE = wealth inequality narratives you critique). I've also shown lower rates have sharply reduced non-financial sector "financialization." To the extent this kind of financialization exists (I think it's a very exaggerated phenomenon despite some orthodoxy) and is said to be driving inequality, it's telling most of those effects were pre-crisis / pre-QE.

LInk to the Goldstein and Tian paper:

https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/20/4/1567/5940652

Expand full comment
5 more comments...

No posts