The Federal Reserve Is Not Your Friend

Zerohedge reports:

Americans then and now were lectured that the trillions in loans and asset purchases were all for their own good and eventual benefit, to resuscitate the credit markets and bolster home values. Yet the truth remains—it is Wall Street that benefits from the Fed at the expense of Main Street. To make things worse, in October 2008—one month after Lehman Brothers collapsed and precipitated the worst of the financial crisis—the Fed began exercising a new policy of paying interest on reserves. The Fed began to subsidize and directly pay the nation's bankers not to make loans to their customers and keep their reserves parked on deposit with the Fed.

Today, Fed officials can give all sorts of technical explanations for that policy—a move that remains in effect today. Yet your average depositor received no such direct subsidy and likely still receives almost no interest on short term deposits.

It's unfortunately in keeping with Fed policies that disproportionately favor wealth—like low interest rates, a policy benefiting those that have the most assets and first access to borrowing, not for people who have little or no capital.

No matter how much the Fed protests to the contrary, it shows little regard for the average Joe or Jane. Consider the types of assets it bought as the Fed's balance sheet exploded from $905 billion in the beginning of September 2008 to $2.2 trillion by the end of the year.

A look inside the banking cartel's favorite organization.