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The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy Hardcover – 1 June 2022

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The New York Times bestselling 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 the Fed also has a unique power to reshape the American economy for the worse, which it did, fatefully, on November 4, 2010 through 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 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 two short months.

Which brings us to now: Ten years on, the gap between the rich and poor has grown dramatically, stock prices are trading far above what’s justified by actual corporate profits, corporate debt in America is at an all-time high, and this debt is being traded by big banks on Wall Street, leaving them vulnerable—just as they were during the mortgage boom. Middle-class wages have barely budged in a decade, and consumers are buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student debt.

The Lords of Easy Money tells the shocking, riveting tale of how quantitative easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the one man who tried to warn us. This will be the first inside story of how we really got here—and why we face a frightening future.

Print length

384 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Simon & Schuster
Publication date

1 June 2022
Dimensions

15.24 x 3.05 x 22.86 cm
ISBN-10

1982166630
ISBN-13

978-1982166632
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Review

"A fascinating page-turner....There’s something undeniably gratifying about an elegantly crafted morality tale — and the business reporter Christopher Leonard has written a good one....A fascinating and propulsive story about the Federal Reserve — yes, you read that right. Leonard, in the tradition of Michael Lewis, has taken an arcane subject, rife with the risk of incomprehensibility (or boredom), and built a riveting narrative in which the stakes couldn’t be any clearer."– The New York Times

"Skillfully tells the story of how, over several decades, a phalanx of economic sophisticates at the Fed have badly misunderstood the U.S. economy and often come up with policies that fail to produce the intended results." – The Wall Street Jornal

"A timely addition—appearing just as inflation is making headlines....Leonard writes vividly about a technical subject....By focusing on a regional banker, Leonard offers a refreshingly non-Washington view....The author is surely correct that many Americans view the Fed as an unelected power aligned with elites, perhaps contributing to the disaffection that exploded on Jan. 6, 2021."– The Washington Post

"It’s tough to turn the nuances of monetary policy into personality-driven narrative. But Christopher Leonard has succeeded in doing just that with The Lords of Easy Money....He turns [an] unassuming economist into the protagonist of a compelling tale about how the Federal Reserve changed the entire nature of the American economy... Weaving together narrative non-fiction with big ideas can be difficult. One of the best things about this book is that through Hoenig, Leonard, a business journalist, is able to tell the whole, complicated half-century story of how we got to where we are now in a way that isn’t at all wonky. There are real people here, making real decisions about the real world." – The Financial Times

"[A] bracing and closely reported chronicle....Leonard’s book is an indispensable account in many respects—his coverage of the invisible bailout of the repo market alone stands as a bracing case study in how the false pieties of quantitative easing directly stoked ruinous asset bubbles. But Leonard is also that rarest of financial reporters who conscientiously tracks the real-life consequences of the Olympian deliberations undertaken by the paper economy’s gatekeepers....richly reported, accessible, biting, and long-overdue." – The New Republic

"The book is a timely read to understand what could happen next through a thorough analysis of what this policy intervention looks like on the ground."– Enterprise: The State of the Nation

"We get his point and it is a good one. This has been an era of loose money and the benefits have been very unevenly distributed... The office politics of the Fed are well captured by Leonard, as is the intimidating physical setting." – The New York Times

"Leonard is skilled at explaining complicated financial maneuvering in a way normal people can understand... A good reminder of how uncertain a lot of monetary policy is." –The Washington Free Beacon

“Leonard's wonderfully readable new book is about one of the most important, yet least covered and least understood, changes in American life. That's the effect of the dramatically increased role in financial markets played by the Federal Reserve. As Leonard convincingly argues, it might be nothing short of catastrophic.” — Bethany McLean, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room

“An essential, engrossing and, above all, human tale featuring the central banker who dared to dissent from the party line and a factory worker whose sufferings are traceable to that dissident’s failure to carry his case. A monetary page-turner? Christopher Leonard has actually produced one.” — James Grant, founder and editor of Interest Rate Observer

“Thanks to Leonard's gripping narrative, I now have a new monetary hero: former Fed governor Tom Hoenig. If, like me, you are desperate to understand how we got into this predicament, The Lords of Easy Money is required reading.” — William D. Cohan, New York Times bestselling author of House of Cards

“Leonard’s richly reported and provocative exploration will have you reassessing whether the Fed built on a solid foundation or on air.”— Jesse Eisinger, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Chickenshit Club

“An eye-opener. Well-researched and engaging, it brings to life consequential issues that influence the current and future wellbeing of most Americans... How this journey ends has important implications not just for the United States but also globally.” — Mohamed A. El-Erian, New York Times bestselling author of The Only Game in Town and president of Queens’ College, Cambridge University.

"A timely and persuasive challenge to the Fed’s new economic orthodoxy…. Leonard shrewdly dissects the policy wrangles roiling the Fed behind its facade of technocratic consensus—he presents a sharp riposte to glowing accounts of former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s leadership—while offering a trenchant analysis of how the Fed controls and misshapes the economy….[a] probing history.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The federal banking system has built a house of cards, Leonard cogently warns. Expect it to fall any minute now." — Kirkus Reviews

“Leonard strives to present the issues clearly but without oversimplification….the patient reader comes away with a greater understanding of economic issues that are affecting everyone’s lives.” — Booklist

About the Author

Christopher Leonard is a business reporter whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, 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.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster (1 June 2022)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1982166630

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1982166632

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 3.05 x 22.86 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 27,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

14 in Income Inequality

69 in Banks & Banking (Books)

85 in Money & Monetary Policy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
545 ratings

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Christopher Leonard
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Christopher Leonard is a business reporter whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek. He is the author of The Meat Racket and Kochland, which won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award.
www.ChristopherLeonard.biz
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Dominic Taylor
Had the potential to be a good book, but compromised by party political narratives
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 February 2022
Verified Purchase
An insightful book severely compromised by Mr Leonard's frequent digressions into Trump hating, perpetuating the discredited official Coronavirus narrative and election-fraud denial, none of which are really relevant to the subject at hand. Presumably he wants to appease his patrons at The New York Times and Washington Post.
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Andrew Ballard
Not awe inspiring but informative
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 February 2022
Verified Purchase
Leonard does a decent job in describing the decisions the Fed made in the free money era. I'm a professional investor, I lived through all these activities, but I still learned something.

I'd prefer fewer anecdotes, more hard data, but that's not really the point of the book.
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Fan of BTC
A must read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 March 2022
Verified Purchase
Absolutely fascinating account of US central bank policies over the last few decades and the distortions these policies create in the markets and society as a whole. Certainly not the conclusion of the author but many people reading this book will invariably come to the same conclusion that I did - bitcoin fixes this!
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Hande Z
Good Lord
Reviewed in Singapore on 16 April 2022
Verified Purchase
John Feltner lived in Dallas Texas was laid off and determined to get a job at Rexnord, he drove 15 hours to Milwaukee for an interview. He got the job, but was eventually laid off again because Rexnord decided to move its production line to Mexico. To add insult to injury, Feltner was offered a temporary reprieve so that he could train the Mexicans. He declined. The financial and social woes of the Feltner family are just a microcosm of the state of USA today. What then, is the big picture? That is what this book by Leonard is all about.

It explains in simple, accessible language, complex economic problems that has mired the American economy for decades. Leonard pins the blame on the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the USA (‘the Fed’). It is accountable to no one – not even Congress – yet it wields all the power that shapes the US economy. According to Leonard, the ZIRP, or ‘Zero Interest Rate Policy’ adopted by the Fed, in a nutshell, has been enriching the top 1% of America’s population, and driving the bottom, and the middle-class like the Feltners, deeper and deeper into financial impoverishment.

In a fascinating account, Leonard explains the bizarre ZIRP policy that drives investors away from safe investments like Treasury bonds, because of zero interest, and into riskier investments where the returns are higher. The second act of the Fed is the habit of ‘quantitative easing’, the process of printing and pumping money into the economy such that the banks, hedge funds, and investors have too much cash and no where to go (the Treasury bonds have low yield, remember?) so they are all channelled to risky investments. What are they? They are investments in high asset value stocks. The problem is that the high asset values are mostly artificially created.

Rexnord, for example, is a company that manufactures engineering goods such as ball bearings for aeroplanes. But, the new management found that by cost-cutting (closing departments and laying off workers), and concentrating on the paper restructuring of its debts then selling them off, the company keeps rolling in profits – without actually expanding its physical business.

Where will all this lead to, and how will it end? Leonard is not optimistic. If his analysis is correct, America has plenty to worry about. Those who have some money to invest may worry about the bubble. When it bursts, there will be lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Leonard ends thus: ‘The long crash of 2008 had evolved into the long crash of 2020. The bills had yet to be paid.’
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Amazon Customer
Gran libro! Referencia exacta del roll de la FED
Reviewed in Mexico on 9 February 2022
Verified Purchase
Gran libro. Perfectamente explica el roll de la FED y cómo imprimir dinero solo nos llevará de una crisis a otra sin saber qué alguna de ellas nos alejará cada vez de valores reales y creará más caos e inestabilidad social y económica. Podría ser que COVID 19 solo evidenció lo débil del sistema financiero y la distancia que se encuentra una recesión verdadera.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1 GOING BELOW ZERO
(2010)

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Christopher Leonard

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1 GOING BELOW ZERO (2010)

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Christopher Leonard

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CHAPTER 1 GOING BELOW ZERO
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