Canny caution or bumbling oversight, the world's richest people have
retained huge stockpiles of zero-yielding cash throughout the recent
surge in financial asset prices.
Their persistence may have, counter-intuitively, prolonged the buoyancy of those very assets in the process - helping to inflate the outsize wealth of the super-rich further.
With the debate about rising inequality re-invigorated this year by French economist Thomas Piketty's best-selling book on ballooning wealth gaps, the spending and savings behavior of the so-called "plutonomists" has rarely seen more scrutiny or had more influence on the economy and markets.
Political clamor for redress through greater taxation of asset incomes, rents, gifts and inheritances may well build. But few expect much change in the rising wealth of the richest 1 percent of households or the 0.1 percent deemed 'high net-worth individuals.'
Their persistence may have, counter-intuitively, prolonged the buoyancy of those very assets in the process - helping to inflate the outsize wealth of the super-rich further.
With the debate about rising inequality re-invigorated this year by French economist Thomas Piketty's best-selling book on ballooning wealth gaps, the spending and savings behavior of the so-called "plutonomists" has rarely seen more scrutiny or had more influence on the economy and markets.
Political clamor for redress through greater taxation of asset incomes, rents, gifts and inheritances may well build. But few expect much change in the rising wealth of the richest 1 percent of households or the 0.1 percent deemed 'high net-worth individuals.'
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