Recently, the Federal Reserve has been on a mission to boost stock prices and make sure that no financial crises ever happen again. They’ve been doing this by explicitly propping up financial markets (and, I believe, suppressing others) in ways that enrich the speculator class generally, and the big banks specifically.
Yes, Janet Yellen takes time out of her busy schedule now and then to feign ignorance over the growing wealth gap (and also to scold savers for being to blame, somehow).
But at the risk of being a broken record on the matter, the Federal Reserve as a matter of policy has taken a trillion dollars worth of money from savers and pensions and effectively handed that money straight to the banks. The bigger banks especially.
That was policy, not an accident. It’s no more a matter of debate or puzzling curiosity than an explosion following a match strike near lit gas is a mystery.
It’s now very clear that, while the average person, Main Street, old people and young people alike have been decisively harmed by the Fed’s policies, the big banks have been doing just great.
A few of their many gains include:
- $26 billion a year in risk free profits directly deposited into their accounts by the Fed via the Interest On Excess Reserves (IOER) policy.
- Massive gains from front running Fed and other central bank purchases as they expanded their balance sheets. For example, please consider JPM’s zero days of “trading” losses in 2016 with an average daily haul of $80 million. That’s good “work” if you can get it.
by adam-taggart-2 
