Economics
Inequality Play Is Over, Says Analyst Who Coined ‘Plutonomy’
A political backlash is brewing after the wealth gap widened for decades.
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A few years before the financial crisis, Ajay Kapur started advising investors to bet on the rich. He now says it may be time to unwind that trade.
In the mid-2000s, Kapur and his then-colleagues at Citigroup Inc. used the term “plutonomy” to describe economies where income and wealth are increasingly concentrated at the top. The U.S. was Exhibit A. The investment thesis, which they fleshed out in a series of reports, boiled down to this: Buy the stuff rich people like.