Lords of Easy Money

Description

Christopher Leonard investigates how the Federal Reserve’s long experiment with exceptionally low interest rates and large-scale asset purchases reshaped the American economy after the 2008 financial crisis. Former Kansas City Fed president Thomas Hoenig, a persistent dissenter, provides a human thread through debates conducted largely outside public view. Leonard follows cheap money from central-bank meetings into financial markets, corporate borrowing, investment decisions, and household wealth, arguing that the policy encouraged leverage, inflated asset prices, and distributed gains and risks unevenly. Extending through the economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the book turns quantitative easing and monetary policy into a reported narrative about institutional power, unintended consequences, and who benefits when money becomes easy.

Themes