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The primary bailout during the 2008 housing crisis went to homeowners, not to banks through TARP. The secondary bailout was to banks, the Fed bought up trillion
by adventured 1y ago
The primary bailout during the 2008 housing crisis went to homeowners, not to banks through TARP. The secondary bailout was to banks, the Fed bought up trillions of dollars worth of garbage housing assets. That homeowner bailout was never paid back: it damaged the economy in the form of dollar debasement (ie lower purchasing power for everybody holding dollars). The Fed increased its balance sheet 400% in six years, and never looked back. The housing bailout was trillions of dollars, meant to keep that gigantic housing asset pool inflated artificially. We did it again during Covid, with another gigantic consumer bailout.
See: gold at $400 vs gold at $4,000. Aka the destruction of the USD.
- JamesBarney 1y agoInflation was stable and pretty low for the 10 years after the financial crisis. Gold wasn't at $400 per oz before the financial crisis, and the spike in gold prices was fairly recent. Basically the financial crisis response didn't cause inflation, the covid response did.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoThe covid response was what the occupy protests told us the bailouts were. Never has there ever been a bigger transfer of wealth to the 1% than during the covid era.