244 Quantitative Easing

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The biggest & most egregious example of Welfare-for-The-Rich is the intentionally obscure practice of Quantitative Easing by a semi-public organization known as The Federal Reserve... The Fed. The Fed's very existence is often questioned; its main purpose seems to be one of comfort & reassurance, the illusion that the U.S. economy can be fine-tuned by very elite people who know arcane magic. That's almost entirely bullshit, what The Fed does with interest rates in actuality has little to do with the interest rates you pay. The only substantive thing The Fed does is facilitate the transfer of wealth from the Middle Class to The Rich.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Quantitative Easing is the practice of The Fed purchasing bad loans from banks with made-up money. Since money is imaginary anyway, just creating money out of nothing is not in itself a bad thing, since the vast majority of money in the economy is already make-believe. Also, taking bad loans from banks does have a positive effect on the financial system as a whole, and since we are all at the mercy of the banks, that's in general, a good thing if banks were benign, and not serving themselves first. However, consider who's being helped most by Quantitative Easing? Banks are not public enterprises; bailing them out doesn't just help the public, it also benefits the private owners, typically people thoroughly entrenched in The 1%. For every fraction The Middle Class is helped, those titans of wealth are helped tenfold, further increasing the wealth disparity in America. It's not that Quantitative Easing doesn't work for everyone, it just works better for the most wealthy among us, and in relative terms, their fortunes increase while everyone else's decline.</p>