The world's balance sheet reached $1.8 quadrillion in 2025, a figure that sounds like triumph but carries within it a quiet warning: much of this wealth was not built, but merely repriced. McKinsey's latest report reveals that global household wealth grew by $40 trillion, yet the engine behind that growth was rising asset valuations rather than the expansion of genuine productive capacity. Across the United States and China alike — though through different mechanisms — the planet has grown richer on paper while the real economy has struggled to keep pace, raising an old and enduring question a