The rich get richer, the poor get inflation, and we can thank the Federal Reserve.
— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) April 12, 2024
Last week the Fed released a new study that wealth of the top 1% in America hit an all time high of $45 trillion. That's up $15 trillion, or 50% from 2020.
So the pandemic has been just about the… pic.twitter.com/gFfYhed5uJ
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and we can thank the Federal Reserve. Last week, the FED released a new study that wealth of the top 1% in America hit an all-time high of 45 trillion dollars; that's up 15 trillion or 50% from 2020. So the pandemic has been just about the best thing to happen to America's rich in, oh, about a century. Why? Because the pandemic set off the biggest tidal wave of money printing in American history, pumping out 6 trillion freshly printed dollars in just two years. That was roughly one in three of all dollars in existence before the pandemic. That money of course pumped directly into financial markets, so stocks gained $10 trillion over the period (stocks capitalized flows), and many trillions more poured into bonds and government debt, treasuries, boosted by Federal Reserve purchases. Why did it go to financial markets? Because that's how the FED prints money. Sadly, the FED does not print new dollars on a machine in the basement and hand them out to everybody; rather, it buys financial assets and it subsidizes bank lending. Quantitative Easing is buying assets direct, but most of the new money is actually created by banks who literally conjure it into existence when they make a loan. And most bank lending goes to richer people. In fact, since the FED repealed reserve requirements during the pandemic, Wall Street is now free to lend into existence literally any amount their greedy little hearts covet. Once the rich get their money, via financial markets and loans, the money then slowly trickles down to the rest of America often long after prices have risen. This is called the Cantillon effect, and it works like this: a rich guy gets a loan for a swimming pool, and the money is spun from nothing, remember, the banks just print it and then charge interest. He takes that fresh money and hires a bunch of workers. He pays them, and they go to McDonald's. The McDonald's guy takes his dog to the vet; the vet buys a car. The car salesman pays his mom's electric bill. At each step, the new money spreads wider and wider, and it drives prices higher and higher. Now each person down the line gets their money progressively inflated away. The last person in line is typically Social Security and pensioners, who get nothing but inflation. And normally that Cantillon redistribution is small enough the victims don't notice. But in the pandemic they printed too much, giving us soaring prices for everything from food to medical insurance to, of course, housing costs. Since the pandemic, the cost of owning the median home in America has doubled, hitting close to $3,000 which is half of median family income. Many cities, if you didn't get a house before 2019, you will never own a house. So, the wealthy got their house pumped, and the poor along with the young once again missed the boat.
The Fed driving inequality should not be a surprise, that is the purpose of a central bank. That's why Wall Street bought the Federal Reserve for themselves back in 1914; they did not do it for the little guy. So yes as long as we have a central bank, the rich will get richer and the poor will get inflation. With the FED now eyeing a repeat of the 2022 inflation, America's rich should get ready for another big payday and everybody else can get ready for the fallout.
At 7:42 PST, gold reached $2,416.
