Who’s winning — Capital or Labor?

Politico

 The former is cleaning the floor with the latter, according to Deloitte’s U.K. Chief Economist Ian Stewart. “The financial crisis and the ensuing slowdown in growth has put significant pressure on wages. US wages have risen by 21 percent since 2008, UK wages by 16 percent, both well below the return on equities or bonds — though better than the return on cash,” he writes in his weekly blog. “Investors may not be delighted with the returns they have made since the start of the financial crisis. But times have been tougher for those whose only asset is their labour.” H/T Nicholas Hirst.

It’s one of the mysteries of the current economic recovery: as unemployment falls, why are wages not picking up? At the same time, the monumental stimulus pumped by central banks into developed economies is pushing asset prices up, creating a new divide: the haves (shares or bonds) and the have-nots (shares or bonds). Analysts looking for a reason for the explosion in popularity of far-right and far-left parties could do worse than looking at the financial pages.