Details

Engine of Inequality

The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America
1. Aufl.

von: Karen Petrou
19,99 €
Verlag:	Wiley
Format:	PDF
Veröffentl.:	05.03.2021
ISBN/EAN:	9781119727538
Sprache:	englisch
Anzahl Seiten:	288

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Beschreibungen

Titelbeschreibung

The first book to reveal how the Federal Reserve holds the key to making us more economically equal, written by an author with unparalleled expertise in the real world of financial policy Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy placed much greater focus on stabilizing the market than on helping struggling Americans. As a result, the richest Americans got a lot richer while the middle class shrank and economic and wealth inequality skyrocketed. In Engine of Inequality, Karen Petrou offers pragmatic solutions for creating more inclusive monetary policy and equality-enhancing financial regulation as quickly and painlessly as possible. Karen Petrou is a leading financial-policy analyst and consultant with unrivaled knowledge of what drives the decisions of federal officials and how big banks respond to financial policy in the real world. Instead of proposing legislation that would never pass Congress, the author provides an insider's look at politically plausible, high-impact financial policy fixes that will radically shift the equality balance. Offering an innovative, powerful, and highly practical solution for immediately turning around the enormous nationwide problem of economic inequality, this groundbreaking book: <ul> <li>Presents practical ways America can and should tackle economic inequality with fast-acting results</li> <li>Provides revealing examples of exactly how bad economic inequality in America has become no matter how hard we all work</li> <li>Demonstrates that increasing inequality is disastrous for long-term economic growth, political action, and even personal happiness</li> <li>Explains why your bank's interest rates are still only a fraction of what they were even though the rich are getting richer than ever, faster than ever</li> <li>Reveals the dangers of FinTech and BigTech companies taking over banking</li> <li>Shows how Facebook wants to control even the dollars in your wallet</li> <li>Discusses who shares the blame for our economic inequality, including the Fed, regulators, Congress, and even economists</li> </ul> Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America should be required reading for leaders, policymakers, regulators, media professionals, and all Americans wanting to ensure that the nation’s financial policy will be a force for promoting economic equality.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments xi About the Author xiii Introduction xv Chapter 1 Inequality: Why It’s So Much Worse and What to Do About It 1 What We Know about Inequality that Economists Don’t 4 The Economic-Recovery Mirage 5 Why So Unequal So Fast? 7 Regulatory Wreckage 12 How to Fix Financial Policy 14 Chapter 2 How Unequal Are We? 18 Economic Inequality Fundamentals 19 Who Has How Much 22 What of Wealth? 24 The Inequality Engine 24 Worse Than That 25 The Most Inclusive Ever? 27 The Great Financial Crisis and Its Equality Aftermath 29 Chapter 3 What Makes Us So Unequal 32 The Mechanical Engineering of Economic Inequality 34 Death and Taxes 35 The Role of Transfer Payments 37 A Supply-Side Solution? 38 Public Wealth: A Sputtering Part in the Equality Engine 39 Is Education the Answer? 41 Is Trade Policy a Problem? 42 Global Policy Reform? 43 What to Do? 45 Chapter 4 Why Does Economic Inequality Matter So Much? 46 Inequality and Mortality 47 Political Polarization 49 Inequality’s Eviscerating Cost 50 Inequality and the Long Recession 52 Financial-Crisis Risk 53 Chapter 5 Following the Money 55 How Central Banks Work 57 The Modern Monetary-Policy Construct 60 The Fed’s Bailout Buckets 62 The Fed’s Payment Powers 64 Rules of the Financial Road 65 Four Fundamental Financial-Policy Flaws 69 Chapter 6 How Monetary Policy Made Most of Us Poorer 73 The Fed’s Heavy Hand 76 Why It’s the Fed’s Fault 77 How Ultra-Low Interest Rates Made America Still Less Equal and QE Still More Inequitable 80 The High Cost of Low-Rate Debt 83 The Low-Unemployment Myth 85 The Anti-Wealth Effect 87 Making Matters Still Worse 91 A Bigger Fed, Lower Rates, an Extreme Financial Crisis 93 Chapter 7 How to Make Monetary Policy Make Us More Equal 95 The Aggregate-Data Error 98 The Fed’s Real Mandate 102 The Fourth Mandate 104 The Fed’s Giant Faucet 105 Possible Solutions 108 Slowing the Inequality Engine 111 Chapter 8 Reckoning with Regulation 113 Consumer Finance Before the Crash 115 Are Debtors Just Deadbeats? 117 Are Banks to Blame? 118 The Businesses Banks Left Behind 120 Other Precursors of the Crash That Came 121 Capitalism and Capital Regulation 123 A Capital Cure 127 Going with the Flow 128 Death without Destruction 130 The Consumer-Protection Quagmire 131 An Unreadable Rulebook Thrown Only at Banks 133 The Bleak Outlook and a Better Future 134 Chapter 9 Remaking Money 137 What Money Is and Will Be 139 The Great Unequalizer 141 Turning Money into Data 143 What Makes Money Good Money 145 Crafting a Good Digital Dollar 146 How Money Moves 148 The Central-Bank Solution 151 Chapter 10 Rules to Equitably Live By 153 Why Not Just Deregulate? 156 Learning to Love Like-Kind Rules 158 The Specifics of Symmetric Regulation 161 Raising Up the Regulatory Playing Field 162 Building a New, Equality-Focused Banking System 165 Banking While Mailing 166 Establishing Equality Banks 168 New Money for a New Mission 170 Chapter 11 Financial Policy for an Equitable Future 175 Turning the Fed into a Force for Good 176 The Fed’s Failings 178 The Fed’s Equality Toolkit 178 The First Fix: Understanding America as It Is 180 The Second Fix: Set an Equality Plan and Say So 181 The Third Fix: A Far Smaller Fed Portfolio 183 The Fourth Fix: Normal, Moderate Interest Rates 187 The Final Fix: Ensuring Financial Stability 188 Ending the Doom Loop 190 The Future of Equitable Finance 192 Notes 193 Index 241

Autorenportrait

Dubbed by American Banker as “the sharpest mind analyzing banking policy today—maybe ever,” KAREN PETROU is one of the most influential experts on financial policy and regulation in the world. She is cofounder and Managing Partner of Federal Financial Analytics, a consulting firm that provides analysis and advisory services on legislative, regulatory, and public-policy issues. Known for nonpartisan analysis, Petrou has testified before many U.S. government agencies. She is frequently interviewed for expert commentary and her work has been featured in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, American Banker, and Marketplace. Recently, Petrou has been featured for her pro bono work developing a new financial instrument to speed treatments and cures for disabilities and diseases, starting with those that cause severe vision impairment. Karen lives in Washington D.C. with her husband Basil and guide dog, Zuni.

Back cover copy

PRAISE FOR ENGINE OF INEQUALITY “Karen Petrou, one of the world’s deepest financial thinkers, puts her finger on the proximate cause of the pre- and post-Covid enormous increase in the stock market and associated growth in extreme U.S. wealth inequality. It’s the Federal Reserve’s ongoing No-Cost Lender of First Resort Policy. Her book is a tour de force—brilliant, fundamental, elucidating, and engaging. It’s also a sad story about well-meaning policy boomeranging badly on the middle class.” —Laurence Kotlikoff, Professor of Economics at Boston University, President of Economic Security Planning, and a New York Times bestselling author “This book is highly critical of Fed policy and will receive a lot of attention, especially if Fed policy doesn’t work in the coming years.” —Henry Kaufman, President, Henry Kaufman & Company “Petrou’s book uncovers a hidden engine of our skyrocketing inequality: financial policy. In accessible and engaging prose, Petrou takes us through the inner workings of monetary policy at the Fed and financial regulations, how they’ve made inequality worse, and how they could instead be retooled to take us to a more equitable future. A novel look at the problem of inequality and bold ideas to help resolve it. A must-read.” —Emmanuel Saez, Director of the Center for Equitable Growth at the University of California at Berkeley

Unpublished endorsement

“[Petrou] draws a direct connection between the Federal Reserve’s decisions and the rich getting richer, with others struggling to get by.”—New York Times DealBook “Petrou’s excellent new book explains how it has been exacerbated and accelerated by the financial policies that were set in place to save the financial system from collapse after the crisis of 2007 and 2008.” —Dylan Schleicher, Editorial Director, Porchlight Books “Karen Petrou has for decades played the quiet role of consultant and adviser to banks, central banks, and large investors, helping them slash through the confusion of constantly evolving monetary and regulatory policy. It’s a job that prioritizes dispassionate analysis over advocacy. Today, that changes, with the publication of her new book.”—Matt Peterson, Barron’s “Banking consultant Karen Petrou is right that Federal Reserve policies have helped the rich.” —Peter Coy, Bloomberg BusinessWeek