If Promoting Wealth Inequality & Social Breakdown Is Bad, The Fed Is Evil

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Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The Fed will destroy the nation by widening the wealth/income inequality that is breaking down the nation’s social order.

President Reagan was widely mocked in America when he declared the Soviet Union an evil empire, but this calling things by their real name had a profound impact in the Eastern Bloc. The mockery stemmed from the secularized American view that there was precious little moral difference between the USSR and the US, that the USSR was a legitimate “alternative system,” and that ramping up Cold war tensions was not just dangerous but useless, as the USSR was as permanent (or more so) than the US.

None of which turned out to be true. While all nation-states harbor multitudes of sins, the Soviet Empire was unique in its mass suppression of basic human rights, its economic failure to better the lives of its imprisoned populations while its military might soared, and the perverse union of a Kafkaesque bureaucracy and an Orwellian propaganda machine epitomized by the old Soviet-era joke that “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”

Fast-forward to today’s USA where soaring wealth and income inequality is making a social breakdown all but inevitable. Wages for the majority of households have gone nowhere for the past two decades, while the incomes of the top 5% have skyrocketed, with the majority of the gains flowing to the top 0.1%. (See charts below.)

History shows that fast-widening gaps between the super-wealthy / top 5% and the rest of the citizenry inevitably generate social disorder and breakdown. This dynamic is already painfully visible in rising homelessness, suicide rates, opioid addictions, burnout, intolerance, etc.

While there are many dynamics in play that exacerbate wealth / income inequality, the primary driver is the Federal Reserve’s near-infinite giveaways to the financial and corporate elites. If we examine why our economy has become a winner take most casino, we find the gaming tables are rigged to favor the few closest to the Fed’s money spigots: when JP Morgan gets in trouble by leveraging socially parasitic bets, the Fed steps in and saves their gambles by printing hundreds of billions of dollars in repos.

As a result of the Fed backstop, JP Morgan reported blow-out earnings.

The net result of the Fed’s goosing the stock market ever higher is soaring wealth inequality as the average US household gains precious little from record highs, and whatever gains they might have are sequestered in 401Ks and IRAs until they retire.

The Fed justifies its enrich the already rich policies by claiming some of this newly created wealth will trickle down to the masses via walking the wealthy’s dogs, polishing their Mercedes, tutoring their over-scheduled kids, busing their tables at $100 per plate bistros and so on.

The stagnant wages of the masses are the trickle down. Average Carlos and Carlita don’t get an unlimited line of credit from the Fed; only bankers, financiers and corporations get an unlimited line of credit from the Fed.

If an alien force was purposefully widening America’s wealth / income gap to destabilize the nation’s social order, would we hesitate to call this force evil? Would we rationalize this force as “no worse than any other force” and an “alternative system” with the same moral standing as free markets and democracy?

Ours is a moral universe, and the first necessary step is to call things by their real name: the Fed is evil. Any force that relentlessly promotes fast-widening wealth / income inequality, knowing full well that the inevitable result is social breakdown, is evil.

If this force were external, its evil nature would not be denied or defended. But because the Fed favors the wealthy and powerful, it masks its evil behind an Orwellian cloak of PR much like the former USSR.

The parallels with the Evil Empire don’t stop there. While the Fed pillages the vast majority of Americans and diverts the nation’s wealth to the top 0.1%, it claims, absurdly and speciously, to be “helping the commoner.” This is as Orwellian as it gets.

The Fed will destroy the nation by widening the wealth/income inequality that is breaking down the nation’s social order.