Deep Analysis · US & Canada
A US$10.9 billion takeover lands at a 49 percent premium. Home prices hit a record. The market roars. And the American consumer is more pessimistic than at any point the University of Michigan has ever measured. The disconnect between the asset economy and the wage economy is not noise around the story — it is the story.
America's Split Economy: The Boom and the Worker. (Photo internet reproduction)
On the same June day, two Americas filed their paperwork. In one, AbbVie agreed to buy Apogee Therapeutics for US$135.11 a share in cash, a deal its own filing values at about US$10.9 billion — struck at a roughly 49 percent premium to Apogee’s previous close and funded with debt the company has no trouble raising. In the other America, the University of Michigan’s consumer survey sat near the lowest readings in its history, with 57 percent of people volunteering that high prices were eroding their personal finances.
That gap is the most important macroeconomic fact in the United States right now, and it does not resolve into a single mood. The capital markets are behaving as though the good times are permanent; the household sector is behaving as though the floor could give way. The Rio Times read three primary releases directly — AbbVie’s merger filing, the National Association of Realtors’ existing-home-sales report, and the Michigan sentiment series — and what they describe, together, is not a contradiction to be explained away. It is a structural split between people who own assets and people who earn wages.
