> And look where that got us: the federal reserve printed trillions of dollars in 2020 to prop up the stock market.
They didn't print money to prop up the stock market, first of all, that was a side-effect.
A massive shock to the economy - remember COVID? - caused people to go home and stop working - to save money instead of spending it - and broke down supply chains. Without intervention this would have led to a deflationary spiral where merchants tried to lower the prices to incentivize spending, but of course this would mean they had less money to pay employees, which in turn meant employees couldn't afford goods - and so on. [1] All of the worst periods in world history were deflationary.
So the money supply was increased via QE swaps (which by the way, just swap assets on the books at banks with reserves to collateralize loans) and lower interest rates. This allowed folks to go back to work and allowed the economy to resume functioning.
Money isn't printed and handed out. Money enters the system via lending. All the money that was created will blink out of existence as the loans it was issued against are repaid. The Fed can reduce the supply if the supply itself is causing prices to go up - but it is not. The Fed has the tools to reduce supply just as it has the tools to increase the supply.
A lot of excess liquidity went into assets, but as interest rates go up, it'll come right back out and blink out of existence. So what?
The Federal Reserve literally saved the economy.
Explain to me how this is bad in any way?
This feels a lot like people complaining bitterly about the 2008 bailouts - which by the way were loans not grants, and have been repaid netting the US government over $100B in profits. [2]
Maybe, just maybe, the Fed isn't a scam?
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deflationary-spiral.asp
[2] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/