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Fortune
Fortune
Hillary Hoffower, Chloe Berger

The ‘great wealth transfer’ isn't $73 trillion but $129 trillion, Bank of America says—and the government gave most of it to baby boomers

(Credit: Ippei Naoi/Getty Images)

You’ve probably heard about the “great wealth transfer.” It's the $72 trillion stack of assets that baby boomers are sitting on and going to pass onto millennials someday, thereby solving many of the economically beleaguered younger generation's problems. But there was another, even more “massive” wealth transfer from the government to the baby boomers over the last 40 years, according to Bank of America Research.

The investment bank isn’t alone in coming to this conclusion. No less a figure than Ray Dalio, the billionaire and former leader of what was for many years the world’s biggest hedge fund, wrote on his LinkedIn page in August about a “coordinated government maneuver” that left household balance sheets rich and the state effectively broke. Dalio did not mention the boomers, or any generation, by name, but BofA has now done him one better.

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