American households are worth a record $195.9 trillion, but the country saves only about a quarter of what it saved in 1997, adjusted for inflation. Which begs one question: who got all the money?
Wealth Soared, and Somehow Savings Didn't
Household net worth rose from $35.5 trillion at the end of 1997 to $182.3 trillion at the end of 2025. In the second quarter, it jumped $12.8 trillion to $195.9 trillion. That’s a record 8 times disposable income, driven by gains in corporate equity. Over the same stretch, net national saving fell from 6.3% of income to 1.6%.
The wealth didn’t come from household savings. Instead, it came from asset prices.
New Money Doesn't Land Evenly
The mainstream read treats money printing as a CPI story and inequality as a separate fight. The truth is that it’s all tied together. The Fed’s balance sheet grew from $0.7 trillion in 2003 to nearly $9 trillion in 2022. It’s $6.7 trillion today.
When the Fed buys bonds, cash first lands with dealers and banks, and they bid for assets. New money reaches asset markets first, so asset owners feel it first. In the second quarter, the top 1% held 32.5% of household net worth. The bottom 50% held 2.3%. Economists argue about how much of that gap is policy.
The Man Who Named This Pattern, Profited From It
In 1720, Richard Cantillon was a banker in Paris. John Law’s bank was printing notes to lift shares in his Mississippi Company. Cantillon bought early, sold higher, and even collected debts in London and Amsterdam.
A decade later, he wrote that new money enriches whoever receives it first. His edge was proximity to the printing press. These days, it’s the big banks who are standing first in line for the digital dollar.
Gold Stands Outside the Long Line at Bank
Nobody issues it, so nobody can jump the government line to get it first. It’s part and parcel of why central banks keep buying it anyway. They added 289 tons in the second quarter, a quarterly record, because smart money knows how to zig when others zag.
Since the end of 1997, household net worth is up 5.5 times. Gold is up about 14 times, from $289 to roughly $4,100, even after a recent pullback.
That’s Empire Money: the asset that doesn’t care who stands closest to the money press. Cantillon’s edge was jumping the whole line altogether. Gold sits patiently outside the rigged system entirely.
— U.S. Gold Bureau Team
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byUnited States Gold Bureau