The pandemic makes Americans richer

The pandemic has ruined the economies of many billions of families and the wealth of most countries. The big exception, hard to believe at first glance, is the United States. Thanks to COVID-19, which has been giving us so much grief, Americans are richer than before. This is confirmed by a report from the Federal Reserve, no less: national wealth has increased by 13.5 billion dollars.

The Wall Street Journal carried the news on its front page under the headline: "Americans, richer, and the very rich, even richer". The coronavirus made us equal in terms of health risk, but not in the size of the current account. Such is life and its partner the economy.

To illustrate the surprise of these figures, it is worth remembering that nothing like this has happened in the United States in the last thirty years. In the crisis, the effects of which are still in force, which occurred in 2018 and crushed us for a decade, national wealth fell by 8,000 million. The reasons are an accumulation of facts that coincided.

The confinement of families led to a drop in everyday spending that reduced the flow of money, but in return allowed people to use their savings to pay off debts, especially credit card debts, and to make small investments in shares of large corporations that suddenly saw their profits rise.

The sums of money provided by official aid, the advantages granted to certain activities and the private charitable contributions that arose spontaneously to help those affected by job losses and situations of extreme poverty with their primary needs are also estimated.