(ZEROHEDGE) – Over the weekend, we showed a staggering wealth distribution statistic cementing the U.S. status as a banana republic: according to Fed data which breaks down the distribution of wealth according to income quintile (or 20% bucket) the middle 60% of US households by income saw their combined assets drop from 26.7% to 26.6% of national wealth as of June, the lowest in Federal Reserve data, while for the first time the super rich had a bigger share, at 27%.
While especially true for the top 1%, it is all the rich that have benefited from the Fed's generous liquidity pump at the expense of the extinction of the US middle class – as the next chart shows, over the past 30 years, 10 percentage points of American wealth has shifted to the top 20% of earners, who now hold 70% of the total. The bottom 80% are left with less than 30%.
But while we have extensively discussed the destructive impact of the Fed on the middle class – while enriching the top 1% – a view espoused recently by Stan Druckenmiller who in May called the Fed the single "greatest engine of wealth inequality" in history (to which we would also add the end of the gold standard under Nixon), some have asked what about the sub-middle class? After all one can argue (correctly) that the swing voter in the US is not in the top 1%, but rather in the bottom 50%.
The post Pandemic wiped out entire savings of 20% of U.S. households appeared first on WND.
