sure but the Fed has few other tools. we don't even have a fully functional unemployment insurance program. so how do we keep capital markets going? i agree that the GOP can be blamed. I just see the 2007-08 collapse as leaving few options. And by the way, I work in life insurance and low interest rates hurt us. but I still don't see the fed as having a better tool . nor was there will in congress (with the gop filibuster) to help mortgage holders directly - as one example.
The fed doesn't have any other tools, nor did it request any new ones from congress, nor did congress think to address it themselves. Everyone seemed to be *perfectly* happy with corporations and the rich taking advantage of zero interest loans using leveraged assets to triple their income in short periods of time and drastically grow the wealth inequality between the asset-owning class and the rental/mortgage class. Probably because every single member of congress and the senate are card-carrying members of the asset-holding class. Think they want a guy like Fetterman in there with them? LOL
Like, we could have simply made some rule for the banks that says "you can give out zero interest loans to renters and mortgage-seekers, but you can't give them to whales using leveraged assets to obtain zero-interest loans to triple their portfolios on the federal stimulus cash swishing around and growing the very same corporations the whales were investing in. Everyone saw this. Occupy Wall Street and the TARP bailout protests were all about this. The issues got ignored. Now we're here with even more wealth inequality that is increasingly radicalizing the country's politics. When vertical inequality because class-set horizontal inequality, political turmoil and political violence at scale follow in close proximity. From the populism of the Graci Brothers to the populism of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The rich in this country are melting democracy down for better profits just like Marian Reforms did to Rome.
In fact there was quite a ruckus at the time. So Republicans had to be begged to support the bank bailout. and Democrats were split re wanted to prosecute the financial sector. and then we have Obama's first term. Folks like Romney wrote strident op-eds against bailing out detroit. and then the GOP fought the relatively mild bail out Obama wanted for the economy. So... there was no way to create a set of measures more than what existed. It was not about happiness that the system was a mess. It was a system that is designed via the senate to make it hard to do anything.
Little that Obama wanted to do was allowed. So sorry why would anyone waste time on more lost causes.
Those issues were with respect to the bailouts by the gov, not about the debt purchases by the federal reserve or the zero-interest loans being given to corporations and rich individuals. Maybe my memory isn't great, as I was only 22 at the time and had just gotten out of mil service, but I don't recall any politician of any stripe--save for perhaps Ron Paul (I don't like him personally)--talking about how the zero-interest loans were going to balloon assets for the rich and drive wealth inequality for the next 14 years because the corporations and the rich were going to take advantage of them and use them to triple their money on a short turnaround. I don't even think Ron Paul's criticism of the fed revolved around what the rich were going to do so much as the fact that somebody like the fed could do quantitative easing. The much bigger issue for me was going to be how the rich were going to capitalize off of what the federal reserve was doing with loans to drive wealth inequality even further. They absorbed the lion's share of the economic gains from the 2009-2022 bull run, because not only were they already making money off of the natural state of play, they could leverage their assets to obtain zero-interest loans to be put into high-growth investments so that they could become even *bigger* multi-millionaires or multi-billionaires. Nobody said shit about THAT greed and wealth inequality in the post-'09 market rally from my memory. MAYBE Bernie Sanders. MAYBE.
sure but the Fed has few other tools. we don't even have a fully functional unemployment insurance program. so how do we keep capital markets going? i agree that the GOP can be blamed. I just see the 2007-08 collapse as leaving few options. And by the way, I work in life insurance and low interest rates hurt us. but I still don't see the fed as having a better tool . nor was there will in congress (with the gop filibuster) to help mortgage holders directly - as one example.
The fed doesn't have any other tools, nor did it request any new ones from congress, nor did congress think to address it themselves. Everyone seemed to be *perfectly* happy with corporations and the rich taking advantage of zero interest loans using leveraged assets to triple their income in short periods of time and drastically grow the wealth inequality between the asset-owning class and the rental/mortgage class. Probably because every single member of congress and the senate are card-carrying members of the asset-holding class. Think they want a guy like Fetterman in there with them? LOL
Like, we could have simply made some rule for the banks that says "you can give out zero interest loans to renters and mortgage-seekers, but you can't give them to whales using leveraged assets to obtain zero-interest loans to triple their portfolios on the federal stimulus cash swishing around and growing the very same corporations the whales were investing in. Everyone saw this. Occupy Wall Street and the TARP bailout protests were all about this. The issues got ignored. Now we're here with even more wealth inequality that is increasingly radicalizing the country's politics. When vertical inequality because class-set horizontal inequality, political turmoil and political violence at scale follow in close proximity. From the populism of the Graci Brothers to the populism of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The rich in this country are melting democracy down for better profits just like Marian Reforms did to Rome.
In fact there was quite a ruckus at the time. So Republicans had to be begged to support the bank bailout. and Democrats were split re wanted to prosecute the financial sector. and then we have Obama's first term. Folks like Romney wrote strident op-eds against bailing out detroit. and then the GOP fought the relatively mild bail out Obama wanted for the economy. So... there was no way to create a set of measures more than what existed. It was not about happiness that the system was a mess. It was a system that is designed via the senate to make it hard to do anything.
Little that Obama wanted to do was allowed. So sorry why would anyone waste time on more lost causes.
Those issues were with respect to the bailouts by the gov, not about the debt purchases by the federal reserve or the zero-interest loans being given to corporations and rich individuals. Maybe my memory isn't great, as I was only 22 at the time and had just gotten out of mil service, but I don't recall any politician of any stripe--save for perhaps Ron Paul (I don't like him personally)--talking about how the zero-interest loans were going to balloon assets for the rich and drive wealth inequality for the next 14 years because the corporations and the rich were going to take advantage of them and use them to triple their money on a short turnaround. I don't even think Ron Paul's criticism of the fed revolved around what the rich were going to do so much as the fact that somebody like the fed could do quantitative easing. The much bigger issue for me was going to be how the rich were going to capitalize off of what the federal reserve was doing with loans to drive wealth inequality even further. They absorbed the lion's share of the economic gains from the 2009-2022 bull run, because not only were they already making money off of the natural state of play, they could leverage their assets to obtain zero-interest loans to be put into high-growth investments so that they could become even *bigger* multi-millionaires or multi-billionaires. Nobody said shit about THAT greed and wealth inequality in the post-'09 market rally from my memory. MAYBE Bernie Sanders. MAYBE.
R>G was talked about a lot when Picketty brought it up back then. But not enough very serious people cared. They still don't because it benefits them.
That is true. Read Capitalism in the 21st Century when it debuted. Picketty was on Ezra's pod a few weeks back talking a lot about R>G.