The Fed helped fuel a stock market boom that benefited wealthy Americans — and left behind everyone else
Low-interest policies helped stabilize the economy, but they also set off a multitrillion-dollar run-up in markets, which overwhelmingly benefited the richest 10 percent of Americans
By Allan Sloan and Cezary Podkul | ProPublica
Ever since the covid-19 pandemic struck, the Federal Reserve has gotten plenty of kudos for moves that have helped stabilize the economy, kept house prices from tanking and supported the stock market. But those successes have obscured another effect: the inadvertent impact the Fed’s ultralow interest rates and bond-buying sprees are having on economic inequality….he February drop, the disparity between stocks and home equity is huge. “Inequality is a cumulative process,” said Karen Petrou, author of “Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America” and managing partner of the Washington-based consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics. “The richer you are, the richer you get, and the poorer you are, the poorer you get, unless something puts that engine in reverse,” she said. “That engine is driven not by fate or by untouchable phenomena such as demographics but most importantly by policy decisions.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/04/26/federal-reserve-interest-rates-inequality/