Prologue | What Is Happening to the World?
This year, the world has never been short of news.
Markets fluctuate daily, policies are rolled out one after another, technologies advance at breakneck speed, and the flow of capital and data seems endless.
Yet amid this constant noise, one fundamental question has grown clearer, sharper, and more urgent—
What, exactly, is happening to the world?
Why has money never been more abundant, while the sense of personal wealth feels increasingly scarce?
Why do macro tools keep appearing, yet micro-level anxiety refuses to recede?
Why do technological frontiers expand rapidly, while our sense of security subtly retreats?
Why are market narratives as lively as ever, while the real stories of the economy are harder and harder to tell?
These questions transcend borders and cut across social strata.
They echo simultaneously in Europe and the United States, across Asia, Africa, and Latin America; they manifest in nations large and small, and are embedded in corporate balance sheets, household decisions, and individual life planning.
This is not the shock of a single event, but the impact of a moment when many “once-taken-for-granted rules” appear to be failing at the same time—producing a widespread and visceral sense of dislocation.
This is why we launch this year-end observation.
Not to offer a simple answer, but to return to the concrete realities on the ground
(Year-End Observation)
With unprecedented amounts of money, why does everyone feel poorer? (Reported from Tokyo by the Asia Finance Observer, December 9, 2025)
Introduction | Money is plentiful, but not in your hands If we only look at global total figures, the world in 2025 seems wealthier than ever: major central banks’ balance sheets are at historical highs, stock markets are creating new peaks driven by AI concepts, and the total private wealth has reached new records. However, when we zoom in on the lives of ordinary people, the picture quickly distorts – wage growth lags behind living costs, rising housing and education expenses are squeezing family budgets, and the linear relationship between effort and reward is quietly breaking down. This collective confusion is not an emotional fluctuation, but a structural phenomenon occurring synchronously across nations: money is increasing, but the pathways into everyday life are narrowing.
Monetary flooding, yet stuck in the asset market Over the past decade, to respond to crises and recessions, major economies have consistently chosen the same tool: quantitative easing. The pandemic stimulus from 2020 to 2023 brought unprecedented liquidity; from 2024 to 2025, while central banks attempted to shrink their balance sheets, liquidity remained concentrated in financial assets rather than wages or production. The issue is not about having more money, but rather that it is cycling only in specific markets.
Short Story | Silicon Valley Engineer’s “Paper Wealth” Tom is a 34-year-old mid-level software engineer working at an AI chip startup. In early 2025, the AI concept spurred a new wave of growth in tech stocks, and the options he holds have skyrocketed in value. However, during the same period, mortgage rates remained around 6%, and housing prices in the Bay Area had yet to correct from the increase seen in 2020-2024. Rent surged in spring 2025 with the tech labor force returning. He discovered that the increase in his real living costs significantly outpaced his company’s annual salary adjustments. After recalculating the family budget, he found:
Reported asset: floating upwards
Monthly cash flow: continuously compressed by rent, insurance, and commuting costs The recent 2025 Family Financial Condition Survey by the Federal Reserve reaffirmed that during inflationary shocks, the purchasing power of the median salary has significantly declined. Even with inflation easing, purchasing power has not returned to 2019 levels. Funds enter the market but do not stabilize wages.
Asset prosperity does not equal universal wealth While market indices keep setting new records, indices are not life. Asset inflation often drives the high-net-worth group through wealth effects, rather than improving the living conditions of the general public.
Short Story | Teacher’s Home Buying Dilemma in Paris Emily, a 41-year-old secondary school teacher, has been teaching in Paris for over ten years. With a stable income, she still faces the reality that average residential prices in Paris surged significantly during the low-interest period from 2020 to 2023. Even though growth in prices slowed after interest rate increases from 2024 to 2025, they remain at high absolute levels. When she tried to secure a loan to buy a house in spring 2025, she faced:
High housing prices (the price-to-income ratio is still close to historical peaks)
High interest rates (French mortgage rates are close to 4%)
High living costs (food, transportation, and insurance prices continue to rise) The French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) reported in 2025 that the average age of first-time homebuyers in Paris had risen to 38, the highest on record. For those without assets, asset prosperity means heightened barriers rather than shared benefits.
The Middle Class is Experiencing “Silent Bleeding” What most affects social sentiment is not simply income decline but the rupture in expectations for life – effort continues, but surplus is dwindling each year.
Short Story | German Dual-Income Family’s Budget Marcus and Anna are a typical dual-income middle-class family: both have stable jobs, a child, and own a home. However, since energy prices soared in 2022, their family budget has not recovered. At the beginning of 2025, they reorganized their family income and expenditure:
Insurance fees: rose by 12%
Children’s education and extracurricular expenses: rose by 8%
Medical out-of-pocket expenses: rose by 6% Energy costs, although down from their peak in 2023, are still about 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Despite both earning annual raises of 2-3%, their disposable income continues to shrink. The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) described this in 2025 as “the silent burden expansion.” They are not poor but no longer feel secure about the future.
to the profit-and-loss lines of businesses, the consumption lists of families, the testing grounds of policy, the hesitation points of the market, and the Z generation oscillating between “hyper-competition” and “lying flat.”
By linking signals that seem isolated on the surface, we seek to uncover the deeper connections behind them.
If the world is indeed facing a certain predicament, perhaps it is not because it has suddenly deteriorated.
Rather, it may be because we are still holding an old “blueprint” while trying to measure an era whose underlying logic has already been reshaped.
This is what we aim to document and present—
a deep inquiry into the world we live in today.
What is happening to the world?
