The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy

The Federal Reserve is not a factor that most people would cite as the cause of the financial crises and unparalleled income disparities that exist today. The press has lavished the Fed with adulation for the majority of its existence. The Federal Reserve was credited for the economy's growth. The Federal Reserve was credited for saving the economy when it collapsed in 2008. However, the Fed also possesses a rare ability to drastically alter the course of the American economy, which it tragically accomplished on November 4, 2010, by implementing a drastic intervention known as quantitative easing. The Fed more than doubled the money supply in a matter of years, all with the intention of incentivizing banks and other investors to issue riskier debt. Fed officials were aware that they were embarking on a risky experiment with difficult-to-quantify long-term consequences that would result in few actual jobs. Nevertheless, the Fed moved forward...and soon found itself in a bind. There was no way to take all that money out of circulation once it was printed. The market began to tumble after the Fed made multiple attempts, at which point the Fed turned the money spigot back on. That’s what it did when COVID hit, printing 300 years’ worth of money in two short months. Which brings us to the present: After ten years, the wealth gap between the rich and the poor has expanded significantly, stock prices are trading far above real corporate profits, corporate debt in the US has reached an all-time high, and large banks are trading this debt on Wall Street, which exposes them, much like they did during the mortgage boom. In the past ten years, middle-class earnings have not changed, and consumers are drowning in debt from credit card debt, auto loans, and school loans. The Lords of Easy Money uses the narrative of the one man who attempted to warn us to present the startling and compelling story of how quantitative easing is endangering the US economy. This will be the first in-depth account of how we actually got here and the reasons why the future is so terrifying.