Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, July 17, 2026
Eric Beltunases, a commentator on exchange-traded funds, stated that the US retirement system is increasingly becoming the stock market. He explained that with 58% of Americans already owning stocks and the potential for Trump accounts to add another 20%, nearly the entire voting public will have a vested interest in market performance, making it akin to a public utility that cannot be allowed to fail.
“Look, it was the Trump account announcement which I had been following. But when you really dig into the numbers, you know, fifty eight percent of Americans own stocks.”
“So we're kind of an experiment here most countries is only the rich people that own stocks. Trump accounts are going to bring in like another twenty percent, maybe even more depending on how many philanthropists get involved, And that would be a lot of people who don't even care or know about the stock market are now going to have a kind of a vested interest in how it does.”
“So now you've got almost the entire voting public who is going to care what the stock market does. So if the Fed and the government have stepped in multiple times since two thousand and eight, with more people interested in it, you really can't let it go. You can't let it fail. It's kind of like a public utility, like the electro grid.”