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WSJ's Take On the Week · October 2026
Zimmerman, who runs the cash-management company MAX, is explaining how it began around the financial crisis, when savings rates were near where they are today. He argues that cash is an overlooked asset class, with about $20 trillion sitting in US bank deposits.
What was a typical kind of savings account?
Well, actually, the
origins of MAX date back to the financial crisis. And around then, interest rates were not dissimilar from where they are, roughly around 4% if you're managing your cash properly. And then, of course, the financial crisis hit and rates went to zero and then they came back up and then they went to zero again during the pandemic. And what's interesting to me is that an entire generation has grown up thinking that zero interest rates are normal. They are not normal, thinking that low mortgage rates are normal. They are not normal. Today we're in a fairly average, historically average mortgage rate environment and interest rate environment. So I think rates are not high and they're not low. They're just kind of average right now. And what really fascinated me and what caused us to start MAX, the company, was that cash was this overlooked asset class. Most people don't even think of it as an asset class, but the average…
24% seems like a lot of money to me. Why do people love cash so much? Well,
Miriam, it's a real quandary because cash is not a good asset class, right? At best, it will keep pace with inflation, maybe slightly outperform inflation. Most people are Lagging inflation, which means they're losing real purchasing power every single day. So they think that their cash is safe in…
earning 3% today, you're lagging behind inflation and effectively losing money.