50+ million people approaching or already in retirement did not experience much if any of the recent boom cycle gains. Instead, we've got an entire lifetime of savings, which is severely inadequate by all metrics, trapped in target, conservative, "safe" holdings.
What the Fed has done is betray the working class. They've devalued everyone's wages, but worst of all, they've stolen away lifetimes of purchasing power, for which we'll never recover. We'll never be made whole. Likewise, many of us have already been through this 2 and 3 times before. It ruined us then, we never recovered, we tried to rebuild, and yet here we are again. They stimulated the fuck out of the economy. The uber wealthy benefited the most as they have time and time again, at our expense. They insulated themselves well from the currency tampering, scooping up more and more actual assets, real property, strategically acquiring homes and rent-seeking properties.
So, if you're among the working class. If you are not a part of the generationally wealthy club. Then you quite likely have experienced the full blunt of 8% inflation for the past couple years. That means, not only are your wages buying you less, putting you in a real bind right now, but your entire lifetime of savings is worth about 15% less now in purchasing power. You will feel that soon, and those in retirement, they feel it right now. But that's not all. Don't look now, but while your retirement fund managers are buying 10 million dollar vacation homes, your entire lifetime of savings just got wiped down with the money tightening phase and the rate hiking phase of this heist. That's right. They knew what was going to happen, again. I'm personally seeing a 23% wipe down. So, that puts me at 40% "correction" or wipe down in 2 years. But they haven't finished the heist. If it plays out as it did times before, if you're old enough to remember, the layoffs come next. Or maybe, this time, it'll be because everything cost so much, but regardless of the reason, what will happen is you'll need to start bleeding your savings down. You'll have to tap those funds that took you a lifetime to save at precisely the wrong time in your life. THAT will cost you about 25% for the average working class person. BUT, don't forget that 10% penalty for early withdrawal.
So, imagine it took you 25 years to save enough for about 1 years worth of retirement, but you're forced to use those funds during a recession. As designed, this heist will force upon you a loss of.... brace yourself... 75% in 2 to 3 years. Those funds you're looking at right now, they have merely 25% of the purchasing power that they had 2 to 3 years ago as you start bleeding them down to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.
This isn't a soft landing for the working class. It's a crash landing.