The New York Times bestseller by business journalist Christopher Leonard delves into one of America's most enigmatic institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies, under the leadership of Chairman Jerome Powell, over the past decade have accelerated income inequality and jeopardized the financial stability of our country.

If you asked most people which factors led to unprecedented income inequality and financial disasters, few would mention the Federal Reserve. For the most part, the Fed enjoyed the admiring acceptance of the press. When the economy was booming, it was given credit. When the economy collapsed in 2008, the Fed was credited with saving us. But here is the inside story for the first time of how the Fed has reshaped the American economy for the worse.

It all started on November 3, 2010, when the Fed launched a radical intervention called quantitative easing. In just a few years, the Fed more than quadrupled the money supply with one goal: to encourage banks and other investors to extend more risky debt. The Fed's leaders knew they were undertaking a bold experiment that would produce few real jobs, with long-term risks difficult to measure. Nevertheless, the Fed went ahead and eventually found itself trapped. Once it printed all that money, there was no way to withdraw it from circulation.

The Fed tried many times, only to watch the market start to collapse, so it restarted the flow of money. It did when COVID hit, printing 300 years' worth of money supply in a few months. Now, ten years later, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened dramatically, inflation is raging, and the financial market is driven by booms, busts, and bailouts. Middle-class Americans seem stuck in a state of permanent stagnation, with wage increases vanishing due to high prices, while remaining mired in credit card, auto, and student debt.

Meanwhile, the "too big to fail" banks remain bigger and more powerful than ever, while the wealthiest Americans enjoy the profits of an excessively stimulated financial system. "Lords of Easy Money" tells the "amazing" story of how quantitative easing undermines the American economy, through the story of one man who tried to warn us. This is the first inside story of how we really got here—and why our economy rests on such shaky foundations.

Pages: 384, Year of Publication: 0803, Dimensions: 14x14cm.