The Fed did a clumsy job fighting inequality in the Great Recession. Here's how it can do better.

The Fed's monetary policy tools are good, but not good enough

Dollar bill plates
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

One of the longstanding accusations against quantitative easing — the "unconventional monetary policy" the Federal Reserve cooked up to combat the 2008 crisis — is that it inflates inequality.

When you consider how quantitative easing (QE) operates, you can understand why people would think that. The Fed prints a bunch of money, then buys up a bunch of financial instruments on the stock market in an effort to downshift long-term interest rates and boost the economy. In short, it's paying a bunch of rich people to take portions of their investment portfolios off their hands.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.