>This money is not simply sitting under a mattress. It's being reinvested, often in low risk treasury bonds, lowering the cost of borrowing for the government.

>This money is not simply sitting under a mattress. It's being reinvested, often in low risk treasury bonds, lowering the cost of borrowing for the government. Quite true. But if the government then takes the cheap bond-prices, turns around, and implements fiscal austerity (because it ostensibly has too hard a time paying back those low-risk, low-interest bonds!), well then we've got a very funny situation. Then we've got the situation that people are being taxed so that the government can pay for-profit firms to hold their money while producing fewer public services and goods than before. Or, in very short, we've then got a situation in which the public is being forced to pay tribute to large financial firms.