First published 2022
Christopher Leonard penetrates the secretive world of the Federal Reserve to reveal how its policies created today's economic dangers. The New York Times bestselling journalist shows how the Fed's radical experiment called quantitative easing, launched on November 4, 2010, more than quadrupled America's money supply to push banks toward riskier lending. Fed leaders knew this bold intervention would create few real jobs while carrying unmeasurable long-term risks, but they proceeded anyway. Once they printed the money, they discovered they couldn't withdraw it without triggering market crashes. When COVID struck, the Fed printed 300 years' worth of money in just two months. Leonard traces how this decade-long experiment widened the gap between rich and poor, inflated stock prices beyond corporate profits, and buried consumers in debt while leaving big banks vulnerable to another crisis. Through the story of one man who tried to sound the alarm, Leonard delivers the inside account of how quantitative easing threatens the American economy.
Genres: business, politics, economics, non-fiction, 21st-century, finance
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: insider-account, investigative-journalism
Setting: America
Period: 2010s, 2020s
Audio CD · Simon & Schuster Audio