Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, thrice, etc., shame on me. While it looks like stock ownership relative to money market funds is close to an all time high, that’s only because ZIRP has driven money out of money market funds. Actually, Americans have been fleeing the stock market. They’ve been fooled twice this century so far, and the prudent see another disaster in the making due to central bank insanity and steadily mounting debt. From Jim Quinn at theburningplatform.com:
The chart below would appear to be in conflict with the results of a recent Gallup poll regarding stock ownership by Americans. The ratio of household equities to money market fund assets is near a record high, 60% above the 2007 high and 30% above the 1999 internet bubble high. The chart would appear to prove irrational exuberance among the general populace.
In reality, the lowest percentage of Americans currently own stock over the last two decades. With the stock market within spitting distance of all-time highs, only 52% of Americans own stock, down from 65% in 2007. As the stock market has gone up, average Americans have left the market. They realize it is a rigged game and they are nothing but muppets to the Wall Street shysters.
The reason the ratio of household equities to money market funds is so high is due to the Federal Reserve’s “Save a Wall Street Banker” policies implemented over the last seven years. When you purposely destroy the lives of senior citizens by reducing interest rates to “emergency” levels of 0% and keep them there six years after the great recession is over, it tends to reduce the amount of savings in money market funds. The divergence created by the Fed’s insane policies is borne out by the data.
The average middle class American has experienced two Fed induced financial collapses since 2000, with another coming down the tracks in the very near future. They have been impoverished by the Fed’s ZIRP and QE policies, sold to the masses as saving Main Street, but really designed to save and further enrich Wall Street. The entire engineered stock market rally has been designed by the Fed, Wall Street bankers, and the CEO’s of corporate America who have bought back hundreds of billions of their stock, in order to enrich the .1% and their lackeys.
To continue reading: Dangerous Divergence
