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>> The coronavirus pandemic has left millions of Americans
out of work...
>> People have gone now without four, five, or six, or seven
paychecks and it's starting to catch up-- they need food, it's
the most basic thing.
>> JACOBY: Over the past year, we've seen how many Americans
are living on the edge.
>> Have you got any income at the moment?
>> No, no-- and we have kids too, so.
>> So you're not making any money at the moment?
>> No.
>> JACOBY: But while businesses were shuttered, and millions
were left unemployed, one place has been thriving like never
before.
>> Stocks surging even as America enters its darkest
chapter yet of this pandemic.
>> JACOBY: On Wall Street, it was a banner year.
>> The market has been open for 30 minutes and we've gone
straight up.
>> The Dow rising nearly 18%, its best performance since 1987.
>> JACOBY: After a major dive, markets reached record highs.
The pandemic would turn out to be a blip in the longest bull
market ever.
The price of stocks have skyrocketed-- and so has the
wealth of those who own them.
>> Elon Musk has added over $10 billion to his wealth-- just
this week!
>> JACOBY: Some see signs of mania...
>> This GameStop situation, we will never encounter a setup
like this again.
>> JACOBY: As more Americans try to get in on the party.
>> Right now we're in a raging mania.
>> JACOBY: Some worry a crash is to come.
>> It's the burst of euphoria that typically brings these
things to an end.
>> JACOBY: As the financial world has been diverging from
the real world, I've been trying to understand the many
forces at play.
And I found one institution has been at the center of it all:
the Federal Reserve-- the nation's central bank.
>> It is the most powerful and least understood institution in
the country.
It really is difficult to overstate how important this
story is, and how big this story is, and how much it matters.
>> JACOBY: I've been speaking to current and former Fed
officials...
Is that really the first time you're in a suit since
COVID?
>> From the waist down.
>> Can I take my mask off?
>> JACOBY: ...Economists, and titans of finance.
>> Nobody knows how this is gonna turn out.
This is an experiment.
>> JACOBY: I've heard that over and over-- that we're living
through an epic experiment run by the Fed.
>> I believe this is the economic story of our time.
>> JACOBY: An experiment that's been dramatically changing the
American economy.
(overlapping news reports) >> Right now, breaking news
here, stocks all around the world are tanking.
>> JACOBY: If you want to understand how today's financial
world has grown so far removed from the real world-- and the
role of the Federal Reserve-- you need to go back to 2008,
when investors, speculators, and Wall Street bankers nearly
brought down the global economy.
>> Get on the train!
Otherwise it is gonna leave the station without you.
>> Wall Street shaken to its very foundation today.
♪ ♪ >> We will need to stabilize,
repair, and reform our banking system and get credit flowing
again to families and businesses.
>> JACOBY: The new president and Congress spent hundreds of
billions of dollars to restart the economy, but at the center
of the rescue effort was the Federal Reserve.
Richard Fisher was the head of the Fed's bank in Dallas at
the time.
>> What the Federal Reserve does is provide the blood supply
for the body of our capitalist economy.
And what happened in 2008 is all the veins and the capillaries
and the arteries collapsed.
So every financial function had failed.
It had collapsed and we had to restore them.
>> JACOBY: That's when the Fed stepped in.
Its job is to promote employment and keep inflation in check,
primarily by raising and lowering short-term interest
rates.
In 2008, Fed officials decided to do something they hadn't done
in half a century-- they began dropping rates, eventually to
almost zero.
>> Those massive rate cuts have not been stimulating the
economy.
>> JACOBY: With Americans still suffering and the banking system
on the verge of collapse, Fed officials there at the time
told me they felt compelled to go even further.
>> And then the question was, "What else can we do?"
And the committee came up with the idea of quantitative easing.
>> Quantitative easing, what in the world is it that?
>> Quantitative easing, that's just a Greek term to a lot of
people.
>> A lot of people want to know what they're gonna say about
what we call quantitative easing, what are some of the...
>> JACOBY: Quantitative easing, or QE, was championed by Ben
Bernanke, then the Fed chairman.
>> Mr. Bernanke, what does this do to the financial crisis?
>> The Federal Reserve has been putting the pedal to the metal.
So we're doing everything we can to support the economy, and
we hope that that's going to, you know, get us going next year
sometime.
>> JACOBY: QE was an experimental way for the Fed to
inject money into the financial system and lower long-term
interest rates.
The way they did it was to literally create new money and
use it to buy huge amounts of things like mortgage-backed
securities and government debt from banks and other
institutions.
Their hope was that the lower rates would spark more spending
and borrowing throughout the economy.
>> It's almost like alchemy.
You can create money out of thin air if you're at the Central
Bank.
So creating more money puts more money in the banking
system, put more money out there for the economy to take it and
put it to work and to grow, and to restore itself.
>> JACOBY: As news of the Fed's actions spread throughout the
financial world, Andrew Huszar, a former Fed official who'd left
to work on Wall Street, got the offer of a lifetime.
>> I was sitting in a cafeteria in Stamford, Connecticut, when I
got the call.
I was eating a sandwich, I almost choked on it at the time
(laughs) Basically I realized very
quickly what I was being asked.
I was being asked if I would manage the largest financial
markets intervention by a government in world history.
>> JACOBY: The job was to join the Fed office in Manhattan and
manage a massive expansion of its power in the financial
markets under QE-- buying more than a trillion dollars in
mortgage bonds from the banks as quickly as possible.
>> The idea was that the Fed was trying to get more credit
and cheaper credit into the hands of the average American.
There were millions of people losing their jobs, millions of
people in mortgages that they couldn't afford, and how could
the Fed use its financial tools to actually help the average
American?
>> JACOBY: Is this something that had ever been attempted
before?
>> No.
You have to realize we were in the midst of the next Great
Depression, this was an incredible collapse of the
fundamental structure of the U.S. economy in a very short
period of time and we were building the plane while we
were flying it.
♪ ♪ >> Everything in the markets
is a confidence game.
So, the Fed exists to restore confidence when all confidence
is lost.
>> JACOBY: William Cohan is a writer and former banker who
worked with us during our months reporting this story.
>> JACOBY: The idea of lowering interest rates and the idea of
quantitative easing was basically pulling out all the
stops to make it cheaper to borrow.
>> Basically by making money so inexpensive, by suddenly it
being abundant and cheap and easy to get, they just flooded
the zone with capital.
>> JACOBY: Easy money.
>> Easy money-- trillions of dollars of easy money.
Like, the greatest experiment in easy money in history.
(indistinct chatter) >> JACOBY: All that easy money
sparked a rally in the stock market.
>> We saw it take its effect almost immediately.
The market reacted.
I was a little bit surprised it took off that fast.
>> JACOBY: How is that viewed inside of the boardroom?
Was that seen as success?
>> Yes, it validated what we thought would happen-- that's
what we thought would happen.
When you drive interest rates down all the way out, it forces
investors into taking bigger steps on the risk spectrum.
Cheap money is the fuel for a financial speculator and for a
financial investor.
>> JACOBY: What Fisher and other former Fed insiders told me is
that the stock market rally was no accident.
By design, the Fed's QE program effectively lowered long-term
interest rates, making safer investments like bonds less
attractive, and riskier assets like stocks more attractive.
It was hard to argue with the results.
Stock prices kept going up.
>> The old saying is don't fight the Fed.
>> Don't fight the Fed.
>> Rule number one as a young trader you're taught is don't
fight the Fed.
>> I don't know what the hangover's gonna look like down
the road from all this extraordinary stimulus, but for
now, the markets love it.
Don't fight the Fed.
>> A cam roll one...
>> JACOBY: You look at me.
So we're approximating an in-person interview.
It'll work, it'll work.
Mohamed El-Erian remembers it well.
He was running the largest bond fund in the world at the time,
and made a fortune for his firm following the Fed's lead.
>> Don't fight the Fed.
The Fed is the one institution that has a printing press in the
basement, and there's no limits to how much it can use.
That is what makes the Fed such an influential player in the
marketplace.
Keep an eye on the treasury market...
>> JACOBY: El-Erian's firm helped advise the Fed on it's QE
experiment.
He told me the expectation was that the low interest rates and
QE would have a strong knock-on effect on the wider economy.
>> That was the theory.
In practice, the Fed was very successful, in terms of moving
asset prices.
It was much less successful in moving the economy and the
result of that is we got the largest disconnect ever between
Main Street and Wall Street, between the economy and finance.
>> The banks are sitting on their butts and they're still
not lending money.
>> JACOBY: One of the problems was that the banks were holding
on to the money instead of making it available to
borrowers.
>> The banking sector is broken.
>> JACOBY: At the Fed, Andrew Huszer was disappointed by what
he was seeing.
>> I have great respect for the Fed.
I never questioned, and I, to this day, I will never question
the intention.
What I question, rather, is whether their tools are able to
help the American people in the way that they believe.
I came out of QE1 100 percent believing that it was necessary,
because we had actually helped to stabilize the economy, but
wondering if there wasn't a fundamental problem with the
approach, in that the tools of the Fed worked through the Wall
Street banks, and in so doing, were disproportionately
benefiting the wrong people-- the people who didn't really
need the help.
>> JACOBY: So basically, what you're saying is that you were
seeing, in practice, something very different than what was
supposed to happen, theoretically.
>> Yeah, I saw that Wall Street is a private sector actor, and
Wall Street has its own interests, and Wall Street can
do what Wall Street wants.
And the Fed was, on some level, at the mercy of, of Wall Street.
>> JACOBY: Huszar and others inside the Fed had been counting
on Congress to step in and help correct the imbalance-- target
more money to Main Street and the wider economy.
But then politics took a sharp turn.
>> We've come to take our government back!
>> JACOBY: Tea Party supporters put Republicans in charge of the
House...
>> We need to restore fiscal sanity to this nation.
>> JACOBY: ...dimming prospects for Congress and the White House
to work together to stimulate the economy.
The Fed was on its own.
Was it palpable that the Fed was sort of the only game in town
here?
>> Yes.
The fact was we were carrying the load all by ourselves.
>> JACOBY: The day after the midterm elections, the Fed
announced it would do another round of quantitative easing--
not just to stabilize the economy but boost it.
Fed Chair Bernanke promoted the plan, writing that it would
create a "virtuous" circle, with with lower mortgage rates making
housing more affordable, and higher stock prices boosting
consumer wealth.
He went on television to counter critics who were warning the
decision risked causing inflation.
>> They're looking at some of the risks and uncertainties
associated with doing this policy action.
What I think they're not doing is looking at the risk of not
acting.
>> JACOBY: I wanted to talk to Bernanke but he wouldn't agree
to an interview.
But I did speak to Sarah Bloom Raskin, who was on the Board of
Governors at the time.
>> So, many of these tools had not been tried before.
They were definitely like break the glass kind of tools.
Like, what are we going to do in order to restart the economy
here?
>> JACOBY: You voted for quantitative easing two.
What was your thinking there?
>> Right, so, my thinking was that we still had an economy
that was far from its potential.
As QE began, it showed great promise.
We started to see that people's sense of economic wellbeing was
ticking up somewhat.
People were finding jobs, people were finding homes.
The foreclosure rate had slowed.
So there was a sense that something was working.
And for that reason it was, in my mind, worth supporting.
>> JACOBY: But outside the Fed, some were saying that the costs
of quantitative easing might already outweigh the benefits.
>> A lot of talk about quantitative easing, QE2-- the
likelihood that that will have a significant effect is close to
zero.
>> But the markets love it.
>> JACOBY: Joseph Stiglitz is one of the most well-known
economists in America and a winner of the Nobel Prize.
>> So you're doing a documentary on the Fed and monetary policy?
>> JACOBY: We are trying to.
>> (laughing): Okay.
>> JACOBY: Are we insane?
>> No, no, no, I think it's a great idea.
>> JACOBY: Okay.
Stiglitz told me that while the Fed was doing some good, he also
had concerns at the time.
>> The main thing I was concerned about was that the way
they were trying to revive the economy was a kind of trickle
down economics.
The way quantitative easing works is that it's a lowering of
the interest rates that leads stocks to go up.
And so who owns the stocks?
It's the people in the top.
Not just the top ten percent, one percent, one-tenth of one
percent.
And so it increases enormously wealth inequality.
We had had increasing inequality really since the late '70s and
this was putting that on steroids.
So the immediate objective of saving the banking system was
achieved, but the broader objective, which was helping the
economy recovery quickly in a robust way, in a way with shared
prosperity, total failure.
>> JACOBY: What sort of response did you get from folks at the
Fed to what you were saying at the time?
>> "Our mandate is to do what we can to increase employment, to
use the tools that we have, and that's what we're doing."
>> JACOBY: Was that even part of the discussion at the time in
the boardroom, whether there was any risk of exacerbating wealth
inequality?
>> There were strands of that, I would... I recall.
The... these kind of costs were considered speculative, because
again, the tools hadn't been used before.
So there wasn't a clear sense as to what would... you know, sort
of what the impact would be.
There was some discussion of it, but nothing definitive.
>> JACOBY: Some saw wealth inequality as a trade-off.
>> There was nothing you could really do about it.
But it was, in my mind, in my discussion, what I would present
at the table, it would be one of the consequences we just had
to be mindful of.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't have done what we did.
>> JACOBY: For Andrew Huszar, it was time to walk away from the
Fed.
>> It was a while ago, but whenever I come back here, it's
a very special feeling.
>> JACOBY: I bet.
You were still working in this building when the second round
of quantitative easing happened.
What was your reaction to it when that happened?
>> I was not surprised by the announcement, but I was
incredibly demoralized.
What I was seeing outside of the Fed was rising demands from Wall
Street that the Fed continue its stimulus-- the idea that the
sky was gonna fall if the Fed didn't continue to print money
and give it to the Wall Street banks.
And yet, nobody was giving a coherent explanation as to how
the Fed showering trillions of dollars onto Wall Street banks
was actually directly benefiting the average American.
And I'll tell you why they weren't talking about it,
because it doesn't.
We did not see the knock-on benefits that we had hoped for
the average American, as much as we wanted to.
>> JACOBY: Why is this kind of an emotional issue for you?
>> Well, perhaps it's because I was a true believer of the Fed.
And I worried about what this meant, in terms of the future,
about how much more the Fed would double down, and how
addicted the, the... Washington and the markets would become
to this extraordinary stimulus.
♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: The Fed would keep
the money flowing under successive rounds of
quantitative easing, injecting more than $2 trillion into the
financial system.
And by 2013, unemployment was continuing to fall, and the Fed
saw signs that its policies were having a positive impact on the
economy.
Fed Chairman Bernanke signaled that the easy money might start
to taper off.
>> If we see continued improvement, and we have
confidence that that is going to be sustained, then we could, in
the next few meetings, we could take a step down in our pace of
purchases.
>> I was on the trade floor.
I remember Chairman Bernanke saying that he would taper.
First we had to figure out what does taper mean?
And the minute people realized what taper meant, which is that
the Fed would step back from buying all these securities, and
even though the Fed said it's gonna be gradual, it's gonna be
measured, the markets had a massive tantrum.
>> The markets selling off as the Federal Reserve Chairman
Ben Bernanke said that the central bank could start
tapering.
>> The markets went into a fit.
Became dysfunctional.
It was known as the taper tantrum.
>> We all know it, when Ben Bernanke talks, if the Federal
Reserve speaks, the markets listen.
Taper tantrum!
>> Markets are like little kids.
They want candy, and the minute you try to take the candy away,
they have a tantrum.
>> You have big Wall Street reaction, right?
You have extreme volatility where Wall Street says, "Whoa,
whoa, no, no!
No, unacceptable!" and values plunge.
And of course the Fed doesn't like that, nobody likes that,
that's a... that's a precursor to instability, right?
But it put the Fed in a real bind.
>> Chairman Bernanke.
>> And Chairman Bernanke had to go in a conference in Boston
and say, "No, no, no, we're not tapering."
>> You can only conclude that highly accommodative monetary
policy for the foreseeable future is what's needed in the
U.S. economy.
>> JACOBY: Bernanke's successor, Janet Yellen, had better luck
the following year.
She was able to pause quantitative easing without a
tantrum, in part, by promising to maintain the Fed's massive
balance sheet of assets it had bought-- and to keep short-term
interest rates low.
>> The F.O.M.C. reaffirmed its view that the current zero to
one-quarter percent target range for the federal funds
rate remains appropriate.
>> JACOBY: Low rates spurred companies and individuals to
borrow in record amounts.
And the Federal government took full advantage of the low
interest rates as well, running the national debt up a trillion
dollars a year, to new highs.
>> Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome.
>> JACOBY: By 2018, the new Fed chair, Jerome Powell, was
saying the economy was in a good place, citing historically
low unemployment numbers and the fact that concerns about
inflation hadn't materialized.
>> The U.S. economy is in a good place, and we will continue to
use our monetary policy tools to help keep it there.
>> JACOBY: There was a growing debate about whether the Fed
should raise interest rates and slow the flow of easy money.
For those who were saying during that period of time, you
know, you should've been concerned about other
side-effects of keeping rates so low.
Tell me what the downside of raising rates would've been.
>> The downside is keeping Americans on the side-line who
want to work.
>> JACOBY: I raised these issues with Neel Kashkari, president
of the Minneapolis Fed.
He's been outspoken about how the Fed's policies have helped
lower unemployment and improved the economy overall.
>> The Fed has been on a mission, I've been on a mission
to put Americans back to work and help them get their wages
up, especially for those lowest income Americans.
And if it has had some effect on Wall Street, to me, the
trade off is well worth it if we can put Americans back to work,
so that they can put food on the table, they can take care of
themselves.
That is profoundly beneficial to society.
>> JACOBY: One of the things that we have seen in this
country is a widening wealth gap.
The question is what role, if any, the Fed has played in
widening that wealth gap.
>> Well, this is a great point, and I'm glad you raised it.
Most people who make this argument ignore the fact that
for many Americans, they don't own a house, they don't own
stocks, they don't have a 401K, the most valuable asset they
have is their job.
So by putting people back to work and helping to boost their
wages, we are actually making their most valuable asset more
valuable.
>> JACOBY: But the critics I spoke to questioned the Fed's
success and pointed to other indicators.
>> Wealth was becoming increasingly unevenly shared; in
that quote "good place" the one percent held 32 percent of the
nation's wealth and the majority of Americans said they
were financially anxious.
40 percent of Americans didn't have more than a $400 rainy day
fund.
Most Americans were tremendously fragile economically speaking.
>> JACOBY: Karen Petrou is an unlikely critic of the central
bank-- she spent her career as an adviser to banks and large
investors, analyzing how financial policy played out in
the real world.
>> Despite the quote, "record employment," when you break
those numbers down, you can see that more people had jobs and
that's great, but the wages and the growth in the economy
remained very tepid and very unequal.
>> JACOBY: When you speak to the folks from the Fed about the
idea of raising interest rates, they'll say, "What was the
alternative?"
And you say what to that?
>> I'd say, "What you were doing wasn't working."
We'll never know whether lowering rates would have
dampened growth.
We do know that keeping rates ultra, ultra low didn't raise
growth.
It raised markets.
>> JACOBY: Petrou and other critics were concerned that the
Fed's low rates and easy money policies were fueling troubling
trends on Wall Street and in corporate America.
One in particular was the amount of corporate borrowing.
>> Valuations are generally elevated, especially corporate
debt.
>> We have flagged the rise in corporate debt.
>> We have entirely too much corporate debt out there.
>> JACOBY: Taking advantage of low interest rates, corporations
were selling bonds to big investors.
I saw numerous studies and reports detailing the extent of
the debt-- and how even marquee companies were so leveraged,
their credit ratings plummeted.
The Fed had hoped that companies would put all that
borrowed money to good use and invest in their workforce and
their infrastructure.
But in reality it was playing out differently.
>> Buybacks.
>> Buying back stock.
>> Stock buybacks...
>> JACOBY: Companies were often borrowing money to buy back
their own stock, making the remaining shares more valuable
and the prices higher.
>> As a corporation, you realize all that matters is the stock
price.
So what do we have to do to increase the stock price?
And more often that is buying back the stock.
>> JACOBY: Financial reporter Dion Rabouin covered the growing
trend.
>> So it used to be that the Fed would lower interest rates,
businesses would then take on more debt, they would use that
debt to hire more workers, build more machines and more
factories.
Now what happens is the Federal Reserve lowers interest
rates, businesses use that to go out and borrow more money, but
they use that money to buy back stock and invest in technology
that will eliminate workers and reduce employee head counts.
They use that money to give the CEO and other corporate officers
big bonuses and then eventually issue more debt and buy back
more stock.
So it's this endless cycle of things that are designed to
increase the stock price, rather than improve the actual company.
>> G.E. just authorized a $50 billion stock buyback.
>> JACOBY: The numbers were astounding-- more than
$6 trillion in corporate buybacks in the decade after
the financial crisis.
>> Warren Buffett likes Apple's buybacks.
>> Well, why wouldn't he, he's a shareholder and they're
buying back a hundred billion dollars in stock.
>> Buybacks used to-- it's just another example of things
that used to be viewed as kind of, ugh, you know, just going
mainstream.
>> JACOBY: Sheila Bair, a former top banking regulator, was
issuing public warnings at the time that the Fed was
incentivizing bad behavior on Wall Street despite its best
intentions.
>> I can't fault the companies so much, because these interest
rate-- this interest rate environment creates very strong
economic incentives to do exactly what they're doing.
It's hard to create a new product, it's hard to come up
with a new idea for a service, it's hard to build a plant and
hire people and run the organization.
It's real easy to issue some debt and pay it out to your
shareholders to goose your share price.
That's real easy to do, but it doesn't create real wealth, it
doesn't create real opportunity, it doesn't create
jobs, it doesn't improve the labor market.
It's just another example of how these very low interest rates
have really distorted economic activity and frankly been a drag
on our economic growth, not a benefit.
>> JACOBY: Corporate buybacks, the elevation of corporate debt,
how was that viewed by you and others at the Fed?
>> Something we pay a lot of attention to, but when
companies are buying back their stock, one of the things they're
telling us is we don't have profitable places to invest,
and it's easier for us to just to buy back our stock.
That's concerning in terms of the future of our economy.
But that's not because of the Fed, so we pay attention to it,
it really matters, but in my view, we don't, it's not
something we control.
>> JACOBY: In our conversation, Kashkari was also quick to
dispute the criticism that the Fed is really just boosting
financial markets and helping Wall Street.
There is this idea on Wall Street that the Fed kind of
has our back and that because you may have well-intentioned
policies that are trying to get everybody to work, there is this
side effect, this unintended side effect of just, kind of,
really helping the rich.
>> That argument ignores the benefit to the poor.
And if... sure, if you're gonna ignore the benefit to the poor,
then we're only helping the rich but, of course, that's an
incomplete analysis.
When you actually sit down and say, well, let's go through the
trade-offs of the choices that the Fed has, whether it's
interest rates or it's quantitative easing, it's not
just about Wall Street, it's not just about asset prices, it's
also about thinking about the men and women in America who are
trying to find work and who want to have higher earnings and
who deserve higher earnings.
If we are benefiting them by helping them find work and
helping them have higher wages, I will take that trade off.
>> JACOBY: There's an ongoing disagreement among people I
spoke to about how much the Fed has been helping Main Street.
But what most do agree on is that it's fueled the massive
growth of the financial sector-- a "golden age" for Wall Street,
as some have called it.
Even some of the largest beneficiaries of this trend told
me it made them uncomfortable, like legendary investor Jeremy
Grantham.
>> In my career in America, the percentage of GDP that goes
to finance has gone from three-and-a-half to
eight-and-a-half.
(laughs) Where in a way, we're like a giant bloodsucker and we
we have more than doubled in size and sucking more than twice
the blood out of the rest of the economy.
And we do not generate any widgets, we do not generate any
real increase in income.
We are just a cost.
>> JACOBY: When you say "we," you mean you and other members
of the financial community have been this kind of bloodsucker on
the economy?
Is that what you're saying?
>> Yes, collectively we fulfill a completely necessary service,
but what we have done is created layers upon layers of more and
more convoluted, expensive financial instruments.
And that's what makes all the profits for the financial
industry, and it's taken a lot of ingenuity and salesmanship to
make this happen and a lot of lobbying in Congress, etc.,
etc., and we have imposed on the rest of the economy the idea
that banking and finance are utterly important at all times.
If you do anything wrong to us, the entire economy will collapse
in ragged disarray.
>> JACOBY: As finance grew, so did the risks.
One concern was what would happen to all those companies
that had gone into debt if there was a downturn-- and what would
happen to the trillions of dollars in corporate bonds that
had been sold to investors.
There were also increasing warnings about a key player in
all the borrowing going on, little known and unregulated
financial companies that had been flourishing in the easy
money economy, known as shadow banks.
>> Shadow banks are large financial institutions that
don't have bank charters.
So they don't have a special relationship to the government.
They have other financial licenses to conduct other types
of financial businesses.
>> JACOBY: Lev Menand, who'd been an economic advisor to the
Fed and the Treasury Department, said the biggest source of
worry about the shadow banks was their lack of a cushion in the
event of a downturn.
>> The core of the problem of the shadow banking system is
that it's extremely fragile.
Anybody who is an investor in a shadow bank, who has their
money in a shadow bank, instead of a real bank, is going to have
an incentive to withdraw in the face of any uncertainty.
So little economic shocks that cause asset prices to fall have
the potential to trigger runs and panics.
And so what we've, what we've done is, by allowing this shadow
banking system to develop, is we've inserted a source of
instability in our entire economic system that doesn't
need to be there and that has the potential of throwing us
all off course.
>> Let me start by saying that my colleagues and I...
>> JACOBY: That potential instability posed by the shadow
banking system was on the Fed's radar.
>> How are you thinking about potential risks bubbling up in
the broader shadow banking system?
>> You know, this is a project that the Financial Stability
Oversight Council is working on now, and also the Financial
Stability Board globally is looking carefully at leveraged
lending and, you know, we think it is something that requires
serious monitoring.
>> JACOBY: Despite those concerns, little action was
taken by the Fed, other regulators, or Congress, and
the system remained vulnerable to a shock.
It would arrive in early 2020.
>> A preliminary investigation into a mysterious pneumonia
outbreak in Wuhan, China, has identified an previously
unknown coronavirus.
>> When the pandemic hit, it was so unlike anything any of us
have experienced in our lifetimes.
We'd been paying attention to what was happening in China for
a few months.
I was calling my contacts, global businesses that had big
operations in China, to understand what their employees
and staffs were seeing.
And we were all trying to learn as much as we can about
pandemics and what it's likely gonna mean.
>> Major selloff across Europe this morning...
>> I think we all figured out very quickly the pandemic and
the virus would drive the economy.
>> Investors are spooked by the growing number of infections
outside China.
>> But how fast would it hit us?
How widespread?
What would the health care response be?
It was maximum uncertainty.
And you were seeing that uncertainty manifest in
financial markets.
>> What you have here are concerns, fears, worries, and
deep uncertainties about what's likely to happen next.
>> People were scared.
Investors were scared.
Individuals were scared.
And they said, you know what, I just want cash.
>> Markets giving us the worst two-day point drop ever in
history.
>> I don't even want treasury bonds, I don't even want
corporate bonds, I don't want stocks, I just want cash.
And when everybody in the economy says "I want cash" at
the same time, that leads to potentially a collapse of
financial markets.
>> On the bell, on the bell!
>> It's the first circuit breaker, has been triggered.
>> Market functioning was starting to cascade into
failure.
>> The Dow plunging again today, the 11-year bull market
has ended.
>> Stocks were just on a downward freefall.
You had credit markets seizing up.
People were selling anything that wasn't nailed down.
>> Investors are really growing incredibly pessimistic.
>> The U.S. economy, the biggest economy in the world, is in
freefall.
>> Then comes the realization that we have to lock down.
>> The list of closings and activities being suspended is
growing from coast to coast.
>> JACOBY: COVID hit the global economy hard and fast, but it
wasn't just the pandemic that was causing a financial crisis--
it was the vulnerabilities of a now highly leveraged financial
system.
Attention focused on the shadow banks.
>> What we saw in March of last year was a full-blown panic in
the shadow banking system.
It wasn't something that you have when you have a pandemic,
you have a bank panic.
It was, you have a bank panic because you had some exogenous
shock in the economy and you have these underlying
vulnerabilities in your monetary system that you haven't
resolved.
♪ ♪
>> JACOBY: The Fed sprang into action.
They turned back to quantitative easing-- buying hundreds of
billions in debt from financial institutions.
By mid-March they made more than a trillion dollars available to
the shadow banks.
And they cut interest rates back down to near zero.
>> The Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near zero.
>> What that tells all of us is that the economic impact of the
coronavirus is going to be crippling.
>> The Federal Reserve lent half a trillion dollars to securities
dealers, half a trillion dollars to foreign central banks, bought
$2 trillion of treasury securities, another trillion
dollars of mortgage-backed securities.
It flooded the zone with new government cash to stabilize
this system.
>> JACOBY: But it wasn't enough to stop the panic.
>> The emergency rate cut failed to calm investors; in fact, it
did the opposite.
>> JACOBY: The corporate debt market had frozen up, and
companies were unable to finance themselves, putting the wider
financial system at risk.
>> There's just this corporate debt picture out there and we're
just beginning to see how those dominoes are gonna fall.
>> JACOBY: So, on March 23, the Fed took its economic
experimentation to a whole new level.
With Congress' backing, Fed Chair Powell announced a range
of new loan programs.
He said the Fed, for the first time, would be willing to buy up
corporate debt.
>> We often talk about the Federal Reserve using a bazooka
to tackle markets and the economy.
This is bazooka, cannons, and tanks all at once.
♪ ♪ >> So this was huge, this was
the Fed stepping in on an unprecedented scale, and saying
to the market, "We will do whatever it takes."
>> The motion is adopted.
(cheers and applause) >> JACOBY: By the end of March,
Congress would also act, passing the largest economic stimulus
bill ever-- the $2.2 trillion CARES Act.
>> The bill rushed to the president after clearing the
House in a voice vote.
>> JACOBY: It provided support for individuals and small
businesses.
>> I wanted that to be a nice signature.
(applause) >> JACOBY: A big portion of the
bill-- nearly half a trillion dollars-- was earmarked to go to
the Fed to support its lending programs.
I don't think most people are aware that we came this close to
a bona fide financial crisis.
>> Yeah, I think a lot of it is missed for two reasons.
One: there was a lot of other stuff going on in the news at
the time.
And the other is the Federal Reserve did an amazingly good
job at putting out the flames of this panic.
And even though the panic in March 2020 was more severe along
many metrics than anything we saw in 2008, the government's
response was more powerful in certain respects.
And we're lucky that-that the government was successful or we
could be living through a true depression.
(bell ringing) >> And there's the opening bell.
Looks like markets are set to rally...
>> JACOBY: But in staving off unemployment and economic
disaster, the Fed had also used its powers to rescue some of the
riskiest parts of the financial system, like the junk bond
market.
>> Is this just like a high yield junk bond bailout?
I mean I don't get...
>> We've got to live with it now, Tom.
>> ...why is this an emergency?
>> We've got to live with it.
>> JACOBY: To the critics, the Fed was sending the wrong
message, rewarding the wrong people.
>> Over the years, we've been trained to believe that the Fed
is on our side.
What the Fed has trained us to believe is that if we make a bet
in the market and we win, we're on our own, we get to keep the
profits.
If we lose, they will bend every effort and every dollar they can
get their hands on, one way or another, to bail us out.
This is asymmetry of the most splendid kind.
>> A speeds, go ahead and clap it off please.
>> JACOBY: Billionaire bond investor Howard Marks called the
Fed out at the time, saying it was undercutting the way the
free market is supposed to work.
>> There are negative ramifications to this.
One called moral hazard, which means conditioning people to
believe that if there's a problem, the government will
bail you out.
And, if people really believe that, then there's no downside
to risky behavior.
Because if there's a problem, it won't fall on you, you'll get
bailed out.
If you, if you play it aggressively and-and succeed,
you make money, if you play it aggressively and fail you'll get
bailed out.
>> JACOBY: So has moral hazard gotten worse as a result of this
bailout?
>> There's no barometer of moral hazard, so I can't give you a
reading.
All I can say is that for the last year or so, risk-taking has
been rewarded, and that tends to bring on more risk-taking.
>> JACOBY: Do you see moral hazard in what has just
happened?
>> Oh, absolutely.
I-I think now, you know, the entire business community is...
has had a taste of bailouts, you know.
And-and, boy, doesn't it work really, really nicely?
Yeah.
So, I-I fear that now, the Fed stepping in, not just to bail
out Wall Street, but the entire, you know, corporate America
is-is starting to be embedded into people's thinking.
People talk about the survival of capitalism, but this is the
biggest threat to capitalism.
In good times when anybody can make money you reap those
profits.
In bad times, the Fed, the Fed just keeps stepping in.
You have this never-ending ratchet up.
The markets never correct.
>> JACOBY: It's like a no-lose casino.
>> It is, it is a no-lose casino.
That's exactly right.
>> JACOBY: This is the second time in 12 years that you and
your institution have had to funnel into the financial system
trillions of dollars and there is this sense that the financial
markets have an iron-clad backstop from the Fed.
>> Well, I completely agree that it is unacceptable that 12 years
after 2008, we had to do this again.
I am proud that we did what we did, it was the right thing to
do, it was necessary.
But it is unacceptable as an American citizen that we have a
financial system that is this risky and this vulnerable.
>> JACOBY: What, if any, responsibility or accountability
does the Fed have for the financial system having been so
risky and so vulnerable to a shock?
>> Well, I think all financial regulators that have a seat at
the table have a... have responsibility for what was left
incomplete after 2008, and where we go from here.
We need to use this crisis to finish the work that we did not
finish after '08.
>> JACOBY: With all due respect, I just I wonder if you could be
a little bit more explicit with me.
What will the Fed own when it comes to the vulnerability of
the system?
>> Well, I reject the thesis.
I actually don't think it's been the Fed's monetary policy that
has led to these vulnerabilities.
I think it's been incomplete regulatory policy that has led
to these vulnerabilities.
>> JACOBY: That's an idea Kashkari expressed repeatedly to
me: that there are other actors responsible and larger economic
forces at play beyond the Fed's decisions.
>> The shadow of the pandemic is going to be extremely long.
>> JACOBY: With unemployment still high, the Fed and Congress
have continued to pump money into the economy.
>> Let's keep 'em coming this way.
>> JACOBY: Trillions to struggling individuals and small
businesses.
And, once again, quantitative easing to keep the interest
rates low and the cost of borrowing down.
>> Last March, the Fed announced that they've just decided it's
gonna be the right thing to do to drive 100 miles an hour.
Okay, your judgment call.
A year later, they're still driving 100 miles an hour.
(chuckling) And you ask them, "Why exactly
are you driving 100 miles an hour now?"
They say, "Well, you know it was a good idea last March and we
don't wanna change things too quickly and so, yeah, we just
think it's a really good idea."
>> JACOBY: Peter Fisher spent years at the New York Federal
Reserve, and at Blackrock, the largest asset management firm in
the world.
>> It's pretty basic in-in medicine that our doctor may
give us a drug, which in a small punchy dose, for a brief period
of time, might help us recover from whatever ails us.
But that the same medicine, the same drug, taken in massive
doses over long periods of time might kill us, or make us ill,
or have perverse side effects.
♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Corporate America has
taken on yet more debt, and investors are gobbling it up.
The housing market and the millions of people who own some
stocks and bonds are seeing a boom.
>> Elon Musk has added over $10 billion to his wealth just this
week.
>> JACOBY: And for the richest Americans, it's been a bonanza.
>> Just the billionaires in the United States, from March 2020
to February 2021, have grown their wealth by $1.3 trillion.
$1.3 trillion.
>> Billionaires now hold two-thirds more in wealth than
the bottom half of the U.S.
population.
>> The thing about wealth is what creates wealth is wealth.
When you have $100 million to invest, it's much more easy to
become a billionaire than when you have $100 to invest.
♪ ♪ >> You ever think about trading
stocks?
>> JACOBY: But that hasn't stopped many $100 investors from
trying to get a piece of the action.
>> People like us can trade just like the big guys.
With Robinhood.
♪ ♪ >> All these brokerage platforms
saw the largest growth of new users they'd ever seen because
people said, "Now is my opportunity, I'm gonna invest my
money in the stock market.
I may not understand what the Fed's doing, or how it works,
or what exactly is going on..."
>> The Dow rising nearly 18%, its best performance since
1987...
>> "But I understand the Fed takes action, stock prices go
up, these people get rich."
And it became a very clear mandate for people, "If I wanna
get in on this economic recovery we're having, I've gotta buy
stocks."
>> I'm gonna take my stimulus check and I'm gonna put it in
the stock market.
>> So they're online, they're trading stocks, they're buying
and selling, and putting money into these stock accounts.
They started creating their own communities
>> Welcome Declan, Michael Lee, so many people, Bob Smith...
>> JACOBY: Jerome Powell has become a kind of cult figure,
master of the money printer.
>> Money printer go brr...
>> Invest in these four tickers, I'll put them right above.
>> JACOBY: Billions have been piling into so-called meme
stocks.
>> This GameStop situation, we will never encounter a set-up
like this again.
>> JACOBY: New financial assets like NFTs-- non-fungible tokens.
>> From art to music to sports, it's a new phenomenon that is
moving quickly, and with big numbers.
>> JACOBY: And cryptocurrencies.
>> Bitcoin has been on a wild ride during the past few months.
>> It doesn't really matter if something is a good buy or if
it's fundamentally sound.
>> The money is crazy and awesome and I think...
>> There's been so much money injected into the economy that
people just need things to buy.
>> JACOBY: I mean, what you're describing is mania.
>> (laughing) Yeah, yeah, you could call it
mania.
I mean certainly we are in a mania because, again, the Fed
has put a floor underneath asset prices.
There's only one direction that things can go and that's up.
Otherwise, the Fed will step in and act.
So if things can only go up, why wouldn't you just buy?
>> When I look out at what's been going on the last six
months, I see financial mania.
I don't know what the right value of some companies is.
But when they change by 50% in six months, I think we should
all recognize, boy, that's hard to estimate the value of that.
If it's 50% higher now than it was six months ago, I guess we
were pretty bad on estimating its value six months ago.
>> JACOBY: I assume you're somebody who has assets, who's
invested, and that this has been a good period for someone like
you, in part because you own assets.
>> The Fed having pumped asset prices to historically high
levels doesn't make me feel comfortable.
I'd be... I feel as anxious today as I've ever felt about
the financial world because of my belief that the Fed has been
pumping up asset prices in a way that is creating a bit of an
illusion.
I think the odds are now sort of one in three-- very high-- that
we will look at this as an epic mistake and one of the great
financial calamities of all time.
>> They have the housing market, the stock market, and the bond
market all overpriced at the same time.
And they will not be able to prevent, sooner or later, the
asset prices coming back down.
So we are playing with fire because we have the three great
asset classes moving into bubble territory simultaneously.
>> JACOBY: There's a growing conversation right now about the
Fed's role, about whether it's driving wealth inequality,
whether it's driving asset prices into dangerous territory
that could pop right in our faces, and whether the...
whether the financial system can withstand that.
I mean there are these seemingly legitimate questions about being
in what seems to be unchartered territory.
>> These questions come from people who are keen Wall Street
observers or Wall Street.
I never have once heard this line of questioning from a
member of Congress that represents a low income or
minority district, never once.
They come to us and they say, "Why can't you do more?"
They never say, "Oh my gosh, you're just benefiting Wall
Street, you know, raise interest rates, because I wanna
keep Wall Street in check."
They say, "Help my constituents find work."
So that's why, I mean, I find these questions amusing because
I hear 'em all the time from Wall Street.
And these are folks who don't care about what's actually
happening on Main Street.
I don't hear it from Main Street.
I certainly don't hear it from low-income communities.
And I've heard all of these questions before.
>> The price of virtually everything seems to be going up.
>> From used cars to plane tickets to furniture.
>> If you're going to get in your car and drive to work, your
gas costs more.
>> JACOBY: There are now signs of inflation percolating through
the economy.
>> Annual inflation is expected to top 3.5% in the fourth
quarter.
So now there's speculation the Fed may speed up its interest
rate plans.
>> JACOBY: The Fed insists it's temporary but has signaled it
may taper quantitative easing and raise interest rates as
early as 2023.
>> Fed Chair Jerome Powell said while the economy has
rebounded, the job market is still hurting.
>> Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced that tweaks to
monetary policy may still be needed.
>> It is an awfully daunting task.
I pray for Jay Powell and I pray for the committee.
Doing this successfully will be a heck of a hat trick.
>> I would imagine people at the Fed are scratching their heads
about how they are going to be able to get that faucet
calibrated to a lower level when necessary.
>> JACOBY: And the risk of them turning off the valve right now
is what?
>> The risk of turning the valve off is-is economic
collapse, right?
You would, you would see asset values actually drop through the
floor.
You know, and a complete lack of confidence.
The Fed, by the way, would not, I can't imagine, turn it off in
one, you know, sort of in one move.
But when the Fed does move, it's going to want to do it probably
quite gradually.
And the question is: will they be able to do it in such a way
that doesn't create this kind of massive economic dislocation?
♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Whatever the Fed does
next, the consequences will affect us all.