Those banks, being private enterprise, are owned largely by the same class that owns everything else. If you own shares of the S&P 500 you own pieces of about ~two dozen banks. These are largely the banks that get treasury money which they then loan out at rates often fixed by the federal reserve in exchange for basically free money.
And the trick with that money is that the bank isn't lending philanthropically, its lending to make a profit. So using the current environment as an example you aren't getting favorable bailout loan conditions from Bank of America just because the treasury gave them a hundred billion dollars to doll out, major corporations that want to use that nigh-free money to buy back stock or buy out competition get it.
There are several branches on this tree of money flows but the economics of the last 50 years and particularly this depression from the botched COVID response only point towards the disconnect between the economy of the working poor and the economy of the owner class that gets to see the stock market hit all time record highs while the fed finally agrees to $600 stimulus checks when 50 million people are 6 months behind on rent.
And if you want to see this mechanism in action in simplest terms, the fed bought 3 trillion in securities and the stock market recovered at about 30% rates to hit all time highs again after crashing in March. That kind of recovery is unprecedented and unheard of, but because of direct constant cash flow out of the fed all the investment panic dried up because free capital was flooding investors coffers to keep buying back in with. The dozen richest men all collectively became upwards of 50% richer this year as a direct consequence. Inflation won't come close to those gains.
[0]https://www.businessinsider.com/millions-of-americans-face-e...
Do you have a source for this? It sounds like you might be refering to the discount window? My understanding is that banks rarely borrow money from the discount window. It is really to prevent a large scale liquidity crisis.
From what I understand the Fed has been printing money to make large scale asset purchases. They are essentially buying US bonds to keep the benchmark rate low. This means that the benchmark for interest rates stays low. More recently they have started taking on corporate bonds and equities.
The problem is that, for these people, inflation comes first to their costs, and only second to their wages. Sure they get to pay back their car loan with cheaper money. But they also have to buy groceries, and the groceries went up. Meanwhile, the number of dollars they owe on their car didn't go down. Sometime later their wages will go up, but until then, they're hurting.
Cash would most likely be the minority of their wealth. As inflation occurs, they do take a hit on their cash holdings. But their land, stocks, apartment complexes, etc may increase in value.
> It should devalue the money that they already have, benefitting the poor
Even if all people both rich and poor held all their wealth in the form of cash, that would certainly hurt the poor too. Say a poor person works 8 hours a day. His 8 hours of work grant him buying power of 3 meals. After inflation his 8 hours of work grant him buying power for only 2 meals. This is not just a theoretical, look at McDonalds meal prices, you can't get a sandwich for a $1 anymore.
There are some benefits to inflation. It's cheaper to employ poor people willing to work the now cheaper paper. So it may create some new jobs that otherwise may never have been created.
1.https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/70422/1/332991377.pd...
I am fine and I recognize there are others that are not doing fine. My empathy means I do things within my means to help those, donate money, food, etc.
Regarding the US Federal government, tax dollars going to bailout corporations or tax cuts for corporations doesn't help those who aren't doing fine. Corporations always choose self-preservation (stock buy backs, debt pay down, etc.) vs. helping their employees. I read something a while ago that said for a corporation it makes economic sense to do those things.
Though its worth adding that in a stateless system capital would concentrate and accumulate because ownership is an inherent advantage in every transaction. So its not like having a government makes inequality, inequality is inherent to capitalism and its up to your society how much it wants to mitigate that effect, if at all, or to just make it worse the way the US regularly does via its monetary policy.
According to the CPI, the cost of living has only increased by 20% over the last ten years, which is just not believable.
Why do stocks go up? Because the money gets pumped into financial institutions, and from there into financial instruments.
Why doesn't bread go up? Because the number of people who own large amounts of financial instruments, and who don't already buy as much bread as they want, is zero.
But this situation - they're suddenly magically richer, and I'm not - magnifies existing wealth inequality.