Abstract:
In this work we deal with the recent (1995-2024) Federal Reserve operated monetary policies, which
were two unprecedented and distinct monetary policy regimes. They were, the inflation stabilization
era (1995-2008) and the zero-interest rate era (December 15, 2008-December 15, 2015) and again
(March 15, 2020-March 15, 2022), plus the current corrective period (March 16, 2022-present). These
different monetary policy regimes provided various outcomes for interest rates, financial markets,
inflation, cost of living, employment, international trade, and real economic growth. Then, a new
“progressive” fiscal policy was imposed in 2021. Some of the important, but not so beneficial results
are that monetary policy appears to be able to affect long-term real interest rates, risk, the prices of the
financial assets (bubbles), inflation, and very little the real economic growth. The Fed’s interest rate
target was set during these nine years at 0% to 0.25%. It has created a low level of long-term interest
rates and the negative real rate of interest (cost of capital), due to double digit inflation and a negatively
sloped yield curve. The evidence suggests that these public policies are not very effective; they have
created a new and continued bubble in the financial market, perpetuated inflation, enormous deficits
and debts, a redistribution of wealth from risk-averse savers to banks and risk-taker speculators, and
a huge social cost (bail-in and bail-out cost), an endless vicious cycle. This unfair and anti-social
monetary policy has increased the risk (RP) to the risk-averse depositors by making the real rate of
interest negative and the cost to taxpayers with the IOR and the IONRRP. The effects on growth and
employment of both public policies (monetary and fiscal) were gradual, small, and questionable, due
to exaggerated liquidity, outsourcing, unfair trade policies, the suspicious COVID-19 pandemic,
liberalism, the obsession with the “environment”, the “war” against fossil energy, the enormous inflow
of illegal immigrants, the new wrong ideologies, the control of human beings, the wars in Ukraine,
Palestine and Lebanon, the division among the political parties and the unethical campaigns for the
presidential elections, and other restrictions and “innovations”, which increased uncertainty, the cost
of production and generated enormous deficits and debts. |
