“Fed is injecting $1.5 trillion into short-term lending markets, a rare move to try to calm investors’ worries about coronavirus” — Washington Post, 3/12/20
“FYI, the amount that the Fed just injected almost covers all student loan debt in the US.”— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 3/12/20
For over a century, the Federal Reserve has served as the steady hand at our country’s economic wheel. It was we who provided succor to the economy in the wake of Black Monday. We, who helped guide the country out of the Great Recession and into a bull market that has lasted 11 years.
In the face of the coronavirus crisis, the Fed’s response must be swift, yet sensible; overwhelming, yet measured in its approach. That is why we’re going to throw money at this loser until it begs for mercy.
You heard us. We’re going to pour money on this dumpster fire until the markets improve. Because interest rate cuts are for pussies and quantitative easing does jack shit. We’re going to go to town on this miscarriage of an epidemic by drowning it in literal tons of cash, until it wishes it was aborted in whatever bat sandwich it came from.
Where is this money coming from? Who cares? We’re the goddamn Fed. We shit money for breakfast. We want a million dollars? We get a million dollars. We want a billion dollars? We get a billion dollars. We want to pull $1.5 trillion out of thin air to give to our buddies on Wall Street? We get $1.5 trillion and you stop asking where we get it from because fuck you, we’re the Fed.
$1.5 trillion sounds like a lot to you? Please. Our reserves make other countries’ central bank reserves look like a child baby’s piggy bank. Besides, money’s just a number. All we need to do is go into our computers, type in “$1.5 trillion,” and abracadabra: we have enough cash to provide SNAP assistance for 700,000 Americans, end homelessness, provide insulin for every diabetic, fund universal pre-K and college, and cancel student debt. We could literally put $7000 into the hands of every citizen over the age of 18 so they could weather the storm and not have to worry about going into work. Not that we would, because fuck you, pay us.
Does that seem cruel? Okay, pauper.
Will it work? Hasn’t yet, but fuck it, we’re all in at this point and got nothing left to lose. Because if this doesn’t work, we got nothing. Seriously. We cut interest rates and the market kept sliding like a line of financial coke wasn’t just there begging to be sniffed. Our rates are so low we’re practically giving Wall Street a blowjob and still the Dow went down. We’re in a bear market so deep we’re hibernating.
So, yeah. We’re just going to keep throwing money at this problem until people realize that money’s value is entirely imagined and wealth has no meaning and start rioting, or the bottom drops out of our economy and we’re in Great Depression 2.0. Either way, we’re fucked.