Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/13/2011 17:22 -0400
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
If the Market Crashes, Who Owns Enough Stock to Even Care?
Since 81% of all stocks are owned by the top 10%, a stock market crash has little effect on the bottom 90% of Americans.
It is assumed without question that the stock market is some quasi-sacrosanct barometer of the U.S. economy. But who even cares if the market crashes? Only the top 10% who own it. Yes, millions of (generally government) workers have an indirect stake in stocks and bonds via their state/union pension funds, but it's still informative to look at the distribution of who actually has a stake in the market's rise and fall.
This data is from pre-recession 2007, so I suspect ownership has become even more skewed to the top 5% as those below liquidated stocks to pay the bills as household income and housing equity plummeted.
Pie charts within,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-if-market-crashes-who-owns-enough-stock-even-care?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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