Grateful for billionaires?
March 20th, 2006 by Bill
I came across Thank heavens for billionaires today on globeandmail.com (the business section). In part, it says:
According to Citigroup Smith Barney’s head of global equity strategy, Ajay Kapur, the “scary†global imbalances that have investors worried can be managed by understanding the growing gulf between the rich and middle-to-lower classes in the United States and Canada.
In a global strategy update, he said that investors are increasingly fretting about whether the U.S. current account deficit, low saving rates, high levels of household debt, soaring oil prices, rising interest rates and slowing earnings growth will converge to undermine equity markets.
The spending habits of the filthy rich, Mr. Kapur said, are going to take care of all that.
Not being a billionaire myself, I can’t help wondering how this helps me. Frankly, it gives me the heebie-jeebies more than anything else. It seems to describe a world where everyone, everywhere will end up catering to the fabulously wealthy not simply because they’ll spend like drunken sailors but also because the rest of us won’t have a dime to our name.
As I’m not an economist (or a business guy of any kind for that matter) it may be I’m missing something here. But I don’t see how growing debt and poverty helps anyone except, perhaps, those wealthy enough not to need help.
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