by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
They’re hoping the endless circuses and trails of bread crumbs will forever distract us from their plunder and the inequalities built into America’s financial system..
The primary story of the past 20 years is the already-rich have gotten much richer, with destabilizing economic, social and political consequences. The Federal Reserve and its army of academic / think-tank / financier apologists, lackeys, toadies, apparatchiks and sycophants have several rather thin excuses to explain this away, including:
1. Gee, wealth/income inequality isn’t quite as bad as everyone claims. (Actually, it’s worse, but never mind unwelcome reality. Let us prove yet again how statistics can always be gamed.)
2. Wealth/income inequality is bad, but it’s not the Fed’s or policymakers’ faults; the causes are all beyond our control: globalization, winner-take-all disruptive technologies, etc. We’re just little old innocent bystanders. It’s like blaming us for gravity, for goodness sakes.