household corporate equities + mutual fund holdings at market value to gdp. a mix of both financialization effects and valuation changes. (imperfectly captures total market cap to gdp, as not all mutual funds are equities, and omits other mixed instruments like pension funds.)

graph of ((Households and Nonprofit Organizations; Corporate Equities; Asset, Market Value Levels) + ())/GDP, a dirty measure of the market value of corporate equities to GDP. Also a nadir in the 1980s, rising now to levels much higher than post-war, pre-1980s norms. graph of ((Households and Nonprofit Organizations; Corporate Equities; Asset, Market Value Levels) + ())/GDP, a dirty measure of the market value of corporate equities to GDP. Also a nadir in the 1980s, rising now to levels much higher than post-war, pre-1980s norms.

@perfect_brains the owners, whoever they are. not wages, even the high wages of top managers, but assets (which of course top managers may buy with their wages!)

@perfect_brains the numerator of the chart is the sum of the market value of financial claims, which by definition represent claims on options to capture future output.

@failedLyndonLaRouchite that's always a good point. do things matter in levels or logs etc?

but this is just one quick correlate of a braod set of trends i think we understand to matter, we have lots of reasons to know that, since postwar mid-20th-C, outcome dispersion and various forms of social contestation are increasing at the same time as we've seen highly unequal capture of financial claims that grow faster than the economy, and they seem likely to be related.

@perfect_brains there is output from human production. some of that output disperses in the form of wages or transfers or whatever. other of that output is either captured by owners of financial claims, or else sold for continuing, often increasing claims. this shows the share of the latter growing with respect to the former, which is ultimately what financialization means. a greater share of social wealth broadly construed claimed by formal financial asset holders.

@failedLyndonLaRouchite somethig like that for the pandemic.

a 60% increase in the degree to which access to output is enclosed in the form of lopsidedly distributed claims on future streams of output is a very big deal, i'd argue. all else equal, in theory population aging should reduce these sorts of claims, as in theory older people decumulate. most older people have few financial assets and in practice those who do don't much decumulate, again putting inequality at the center of the story.

financialization.

graph of total US household assets (from the Fed's Z.1 Flow of Funds) to GDP, rising steadily from a nadir in the 1980s through the 2010s, to levels well above prior norms. graph of total US household assets (from the Fed's Z.1 Flow of Funds) to GDP, rising steadily from a nadir in the 1980s through the 2010s, to levels well above prior norms.

@djc

@StefanThinks especially the digits.

@djc is think they found an existing system they could trick to generate a credit-card entry form. the guy actually didn’t want me to enter the information there, he apologized for some mistake and said he had to generate a new link. (i didn’t stick around for that one.)

@admitsWrongIfProven perhaps similarly amoral money vacuums.

I played along on a pretty elaborate phone fraud by a person impersonating AT&T. They'd gained access to my account somehow, knew my billing history and info, promised a statement credit and were able to "issue" it—by posting a fraudulent payment from a random checking account. They caused a link to be generated, valid SSL from within att.com, asking for credit card info.

I stopped playing along when they solicited a credit card payment for shipping my, um, free iphones.

It's rough out there!

what if we go back to the traditional criteria for entry?

(no grandfathering in current cheats.)

(1) you must first spend 40 years wandering the desert wilderness

(2) even among those who meet the first criterion, no one who is angry may be admitted.

they may enjoy a view from a nearby observation deck, however. selfies permitted.

@lauren perhaps the feeling is mutual.

it would be nice to be able to live without being swept into the slipstream of all these nationalist and tribalist projects.

@eARCwelder whatcha doin' with that pen in your hand?

@dubiousblur@queer.af often is not always.

but the exceptions often have shelf lives.

one moment's righteous struggle becomes the next moment's sanctimony, used to shield new kinds of awfulness beneath celebration of old virtues, whose residues of moral clarity renders them uncontestable.

experts say the crisis is worsening.

“Congress must act” but they just kicked out the only guy who was any good at it.

@scentedmeat @Stoned_Deva_ maybe cyndi lauper will update “she-bop”