[pizlonator]

I think that the stock market's rise since the 90s has been a very particular kind of inflation. It's a classic case of benchmark hacking.

At some point, journalists and media decided that the stock market indices are a good indicator of the economy. It's convenient. They don't have to actually investigate anything to see how the economy is doing - they just look at one number.

That's been the economy's benchmark for decades. I think that around the 90s, regulators started to bias their behavior based on this observation. These are people who tend to lose their jobs when the economy crashes and fails to swiftly recover. Nevermind that the stock market crashing doesn't necessarily mean that the economy crashed. But I think they realized that if they make choices that result in the stockmarket going up, then they get to keep their jobs (or they even get praised for being oh so smart).

So. We have a kind of inflation. It's really a case where the benchmark that is being reported as "the status of the economy" is being actively hacked by regulators. Given any opportunity to intervene, they will carefully finetune the intervention with the singular purpose of making the benchmark look good.

So. We have been getting poorer since the 90s while the stockmarket has been skyrocketing in a historically unprecendented way. These are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is that the purpose of modern monetary and fiscal policy in democratic countries is to elevate the stockmarket even if it makes everything else go to shit. They do this because they know that then, journalists will report that the govt is doing a Great Job and the regulators get to keep their jobs.

[alaricus]

I agree, but it's not just regulators. It's also politicians and to a lesser extent anyone else whose position depends on "the status of the economy".

Furthermore, if the stocks didn't go up liek they did, there would be a massive issue meeting pension and retirement obligations.