Maybe you’ve been wondering. Where has all the money gone? With governments around the world, led by our own, pumping literally trillions and trillions of dollars into addressing the economic crisis, why hasn’t this money dribbled down to you and me and most everyone else we know?
One reason, of course, is that the banks have scooped it up. Money given to these institutions in hopes they would turn around and lend it to businesses and consumers has been kept in house instead. They receive but giveth not back.
The other major reason that so many trillions have so far failed to enrich or even made partially whole most folks is neatly summed up in a headline that appeared on the Wall Street Journal’s website today: “Stocks In The Black On Gusher of Cash.” The stock market, by this weekend actually up for the year while economies were sinking, has gobbled up a huge chunk of this government largesse.
I gotta be honest. Knowing Ben (at the Fed) and Timmy (at Treasury) have done so right by best-and-brightest bankers and stock peddlers with huge infusions of public money, all borrowed, all that will be repaid in years to come either via lower living standards or ruinous inflation, may strike some people as world class economics. Personally I’m appalled.
And since this site attracts many visitors interested in politics, let me offer this political prediction: the policies of Bernanke and Geithner and Summers, unfortunate continuations of their predecessors Washington bungling, will ultimately cause the Obama tenure in office to be viewed as a failed presidency. Too bad. He’s a good man and deserves better. As do we all.