From “How the Fed Favors the 1%” in the Wall Street Journal.
The Fed, having gone on an unprecedented credit expansion spree, has benefited the recipients who were first in line at the trough: banks … and those favored entities and individuals deemed most creditworthy. Flush with capital, these recipients have proceeded to bid up the prices of assets and resources, while everyone else has watched their purchasing power decline. …
The Fed is transferring immense wealth from the middle class to the most affluent, from the least privileged to the most privileged. This coercive redistribution has been a far more egregious source of disparity than the president’s presumption of tax unfairness (if there is anything unfair about approximately half of a population paying zero income taxes) or deregulation.
As I have noted before, Fed policy is orchestrating a silent but massive transfer of wealth in the U.S. While our president harps on Warren Buffett’s tax rate and touts a reform that will close about one percent of the budget gap, he says nothing while Ben Bernanke engineers higher inflation rates (almost 3% now) that erode the living standards of the masses while he funnels credit to a privileged few.
Where are those who keen over the disparity of wealth in our society? Why are they so silent? Is it because Bernanke’s zero-interest rate policy allows the world’s largest creditor, the United States government, to continue its spendthrift ways?
— JAB