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Comment by wallace_f | Hacker News Reader

You might be interested in speaking with Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke or Alan Greenspan. When the Fed printed 4 trillion dollars to bail out Wall St., they must have had some seriously good therapists on board to help with dealing with those unwanted feelings you mention. Well, I think they have even learned to enjoy those feelings otherwise they would have demanded changes to Wall St along with the value transfer from the American worker that they were given.

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You know the banks have already paid out and the us government has actually made money in interests from them right?

The US government is not a business, its typical income is taxes. This policy of printing trillions of dollars to, essentially, give a loan to banks, all the while devaluing USD for every holder, sounds like a new form of taxation.

Was there actually any inflation caused by that? I keep seeing people saying inflation has been stagnant for a decade. I wonder what would have happened to the USD if the economy were allowed to implode the way it wanted to, perhaps the "inflation tax" would have been more desirable.

Asset inflation because of low interest rates. It’s made the rich much richer and put housing out of reach of many young people.

There is nothing inherent in the world which declares investment banks must be subsidized by working people. Once they make that the case, and convince the public it is so, people willingly allow themselves to be robbed.

Ugh... The US Federal Gov was mostly paid back money that the US Federal Government loaned, which was a small fraction of the total bailout. My comment is not even about that. The comment is about a non-government entity, the US Federal Reserve. The banks have not "paid back" one cent of the 4 trillion dollars which was showered on them.

The fact that so many people could upvote this is a troubling signal of the misunderstanding and lack of awareness that exists even among educated, intelligent professionals.

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