In emphasising equity market development, advanced (and, increasingly, emerging) economies have created a monster which demands to gorge itself constantly on fresh savings if it is not to bite the hand that feeds it – through erratic moves that create or destroy confidence.
No. Although legions of fund managers (who have become masters of the financial universe through their control over trillions of dollars of pension fund and life assurance contributions and via mutual funds), would like us to believe that fiction.
The truth is that contributions paid into mandatory or voluntary savings vehicles – pension funds, life assurance policies, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and the like – have become so big nowadays that they rival tax revenues in size, and they also influence government and private investment levels.