The Influence Of Crony Capitalists On Policy

Triggered by Robert Kuttner’s column in the American Prospect, the explanation du jour of our current economic malaise blames the ‘rentier class’ i.e. owners of financial assets – the thesis being that wealthy Americans do not want any more inflationary policies to be enacted and may even prefer deflation instead. Paul Krugman argues that wealthy Americans do not want inflation because financial securities are overwhelmingly held by the richest 10% of the population. But what matters for the incentives of rich households is what proportion of their balance sheet is made up of nominal financial securities. And Edward Wolff’s paper shows us that a significant proportion of the balance sheet of wealthy Americans is made up of real assets – real estate, stock and business holdings.