The Lords of Easy Money, Christopher Leonard
The Lords of Easy Money, Christopher Leonard
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The Lords of Easy Money
How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy

Author: Christopher Leonard

Narrator: Jacques Roy

Unabridged: 10 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/11/2022


Synopsis

The New York Times bestseller from business journalist Christopher Leonard infiltrates one of America’s most mysterious institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies spearheaded by Chairman Jerome Powell over the past ten years have accelerated income inequality and put our country’s economic stability at risk.

If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us.

But here, for the first time, is the inside story of how the Fed has reshaped the American economy for the worse. It all started on November 3, 2010, when the Fed began a radical intervention called quantitative easing. In just a few short years, the Fed more than quadrupled the money supply with one goal: to encourage banks and other investors to extend more risky debt. Leaders at the Fed knew that they were undertaking a bold experiment that would produce few real jobs, with long-term risks that were hard to measure. But the Fed proceeded anyway…and then found itself trapped. Once it printed all that money, there was no way to withdraw it from circulation. The Fed tried several times, only to see the market start to crash, at which point the Fed turned the money spigot back on. That’s what it did when COVID hit, printing 300 years’ worth of money in a few short months.

Which brings us to now: Ten years on, the gap between the rich and poor has grown dramatically, inflation is raging, and the stock market is driven by boom, busts, and bailouts. Middle-class Americans seem stuck in a stage of permanent stagnation, with wage gains wiped out by high prices even as they remain buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student debt. Meanwhile, the “too big to fail” banks remain bigger and more powerful than ever while the richest Americans enjoy the gains of a hyper-charged financial system.

The Lords of Easy Money “skillfully” (The Wall Street Journal) tells the “fascinating” (The New York Times) tale of how quantitative easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the 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 unstable ground.

About Christopher Leonard

Christopher Leonard is a business reporter whose work has appeared in The New York TimesThe Wall Street JournalFortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Meat Racket and Kochland, which won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award.


Reviews

Handling a difficult and complex subject material, I thought this book did an excellent job of explaining concepts in a way that is comprehensible to most readers. The overall point of the book is quite simple: the Federal Reserve has sleepwalked into a quantitative easing (QE) trap of large-scale i......more

Goodreads review by David

This is a very hard review for me to write. I am a great admirer of Chris Leonard. I thought Kochland was a tour de force. I generally agree that monetary interventions have distorting effects that help the investor class far more than the ordinary person. And yet this book is in my view so blind to......more

Goodreads review by Mac

Christopher Leonard’s The Lords of Easy Money may be an important book. After all, Leonard’s premise, “How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy,” is a significant stake in the ground. Important, possibly yes. Engrossing or enjoyable, not for me. Throughout, my reading was slow-going, a slo......more

Goodreads review by Tra

This book is extraordinary — doesn’t hide behind jargon, is very detailed but reads so well. I learnt new stuff, corrected a few things I had misunderstood and had a lot of fun reading. I was kinda wary in the first few chapters (reckon I thought because it was so simple yet written with conviction.......more

Goodreads review by Justin

Presents a story that features only villains, non-entities, and average people doing average people things as if it was a story of the great heroism of one central banker, who is certainly no more heroic or interesting than any other central banker. Extremely easy to read, but that's about it. .......more