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Albert Bakhtizin

In the animated Soviet film The Golden Antelope, inspired by Indian folklore, a magical antelope tries to save a boy from a greedy raja by promising him as much gold as he wants. When she asks whether there can be too much, the raja laughs: “You can never give me too much gold.” But when the gold begins to bury him, he cries “enough” – and loses everything.
Today’s financial system risks repeating the raja’s mistake. For too long, rising nominal wealth, asset prices and the fortunes of the ultra rich have been treated as signs of broader stability. Yet modern wealth increasingly exists not in chests of gold, but in market valuations.
According to the World Federation of Exchanges, global stock market capitalisation rose by 18.5 per cent in 2025, to reach almost US$152 trillion.
Wealth has become more fluid: it can rise or fall sharply as expectations change. The case of Elon Musk, whose fortune has moved with the changing valuations of SpaceX and Tesla, illustrates how unstable wealth based on market expectations can be.
The UBS Global Wealth Report 2026, published on June 30, shows that global personal wealth grew by 10.8 per cent in dollar terms in 2025, much faster than in previous years. UBS counted 3,302 US dollar billionaires, 383 more than a year earlier, an increase of almost 13.1 per cent.
More than 1,000 were in the United States, 562 in mainland China and 211 in India. Yet behind these headline figures lies a more complicated picture: wealth is rising in large part because asset values are increasing at the upper tiers of the wealth pyramid.

This is where the deeper problem lies. Extreme wealth concentration is dangerous not only because it widens social inequality; it can also make the financial system more fragile.
Since the 1980s, the richest 1 per cent of US households have accumulated a growing share of savings, a process researchers have called the “saving glut of the rich”. But this money does not sit idle. It flows into stocks, bonds, property and other assets. This supports asset prices, but it also expands the debt side of the economy, which falls mainly on low- and middle-income groups.
The link between inequality, debt and crisis was especially visible before the crashes of 1929 and 2008, when rising incomes at the top were accompanied by growing credit dependence among lower- and middle-income groups. Nor is this only an American story. Researchers Moritz Schularick and Alan Taylor, using data for 14 advanced economies from 1870 to 2008, showed that rapid credit growth is a warning sign of financial crises.
Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff’s broader historical work, covering 66 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Oceania over eight centuries, shows the recurring nature of debt, banking, currency and inflation crises.


Many financial market participants are looking for alternatives to the dollar-centred system, from gold and regional currencies to crypto assets and stablecoins. But simply replacing one financial instrument with another does not solve the deeper problem. If a financial system is designed primarily to accumulate assets rather than improve quality of life, its fragility remains.
The resilience of a financial system should, therefore, not be measured by how many fortunes it creates or how high it pushes asset prices, but by how well it turns financial resources into improved living standards, public goods and lower debt fragility. Gross domestic product (GDP) and stock market indices should not replace the real metrics for a strong economy: health, education, housing, infrastructure, security and the quality of ecosystems in which people live.
Crises cannot be eliminated completely. There will always be policy mistakes, wars, commodity shocks, panic and shifting expectations. But their frequency and destructive power can be reduced if the financial system is less focused on excessive asset accumulation and debt pyramids.
The reverse logic is also supported by evidence. The International Monetary Fund has found that lower inequality is associated with faster and more durable growth. China’s experience shows that rapid growth becomes especially meaningful when it translates into a broad improvement in living standards, not just GDP.
According to the World Bank, over the past 40 years, China has lifted almost 800 million people out of extreme poverty, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the global reduction in extreme poverty. Automatic stabilisers – taxes and social transfers that respond to downturns – can also help soften economic contractions.

If finance is directed towards housing, education, healthcare, infrastructure, demographic resilience, employment and domestic demand, money becomes linked to the real economy and living standards. In such a system, there is less purely speculative asset inflation and less need to compensate for weak incomes through mass credit.
This is not only in the interest of the middle class, but also of those who hold great fortunes. In a world where wealth increasingly takes the form of market valuation, a crisis can quickly erode even the most impressive fortunes. The raja in the story was wrong not because gold was an unstable asset, but because he saw endless accumulation as the only purpose.
Governments should not treat the market capitalisation of individual companies as the main measure of economic success. It’s important to allow for innovation, but the ultimate goal should be to ensure that financial and technological progress translate into a broad rise in living standards – as China’s experience has shown.


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A financial system designed to increase market valuations rather than improve people’s quality of life is prone to crisis


A financial system designed to increase market valuations rather than improve people’s quality of life is prone to crisis.


China

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United States

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Elon Musk

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Africa

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Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


A healthy economy isn’t built on asset bubbles and debt pyramids

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A financial system designed to increase market valuations rather than improve people’s quality of life is prone to crisis

A financial system designed to increase market valuations rather than improve people’s quality of life is prone to crisis