Why the Fed Keeps Denying Its Role in Increasing Inequality

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today on the Brief:</span></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Three Arrows holds more than 6% of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">New platform for censorship-resistant blogging</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Coinbase announces new token potentials as anti-surveillance hodlers flood out </span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today’s main topic: Why the Fed keeps denying its role in inequality </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Some key takeaways from yesterday’s Federal Open Markets Committee meeting:</span></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Interest rates are likely to stay near zero through 2022</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Unemployment anticipated to average between 9% and 10% during last three months of 2020</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Economy expected to contract 4% to 10% this year</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">No specific discussion of yield curve control</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Inflation expected to be 1.0% this year and 1.5% in 2021, lower than Fed target of 2%</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">According to Chairman Powell, inequality has nothing to do with Fed policy</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">On this episode, NLW recaps the above and dives deeper on two of the points:</span></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Net inflation stats gloss over specifics, including food prices that have been rising at an annual rate of 17.5%</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Fed’s pronounced role in exacerbating inequality by propping up artificially high