The Fed’s real job is to monetize the government’s debt at an acceptably low rate of interest. All this other economic and financial stuff is just window dressing. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
Despite their hollow bleatings about ‘doing all we can to achieve full employment’, the Fed’s policies has been Kryptonite to employment, labor and the bottom 90%–and most especially to the bottom 50%, the working poor that one might imagine most deserve a leg up.
As wealth and income inequality soar to new heights thanks to the Federal Reserve’s policies of zero interest rates, money-printing and financial stimulus, the Fed says its goal is to create more jobs. Really? OK, let’s look at how the Fed’s doing with that.
I’ve assembled a chart deck to display the consequences of Fed policies on debt, wealth inequality and employment. Recall what Fed policies actually do:
1. Zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) destroyed the low-risk return on savings and money market funds, stripping everyone not in the Fed-privileged rentier-speculator-financier class of safe, real returns on capital.
2. Zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) lowered the cost of speculation by financiers and corporations but left the interest rates paid by the working poor for credit cards, auto loans and student loans at extortionate rates.
