Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever
Nomi PrinsThe reality is that money, like a virus, will always seek the easiest way to reproduce itself. The profits represented by stocks and bonds have disproportionately accrued to the wealthy and investor class relative to everyone else. That shift has left the world fragmented across multiple economic, political, and societal levels where instability is rampant and wealth relentlessly trickles upward. The epic divide between finance and the real economy is what I have defined as a permanent distortion. This is not a phrase chosen lightly. There’s no going back from here. There’s a seismic rift between, on the one hand, economic growth, wages, and a decent standard of living and, on the other, market-driven wealth accumulation that during a devastating global pandemic minted nearly five hundred new billionaires in 2020 alone—the equivalent of one born every seventeen hours. And that rift is permanent.1
Permanent Distortion is the story of the winners and the losers of today’s financial and monetary system. But the wedge between those who have and those who don’t isn’t just about inequality. While that is certainly a by-product of permanent distortion, the story runs deeper.