Hard money is a terrible way to fight the racial wealth gap

Full employment fights discrimination

Between February 20 and March 20 of last year, the S&P 500 index lost nearly one third of its value as it became clear that efforts to prevent the SARS-Cov-2 virus from spreading globally had failed.

Since a relatively small number of rich people own the vast majority of the stock in the United States, this was a huge negative shock to the wealth of the wealthy, but it had little impact on most people’s net worth.

A very foolish person might characterize that month as a great era for economic equality in the United States. Or a right-wing troll might say that progressive concern about economic inequality is mistaken because by progressives’ logic, March 2020 was a great success story.

Of course in the real world, no progressive saw it that way. But a fresh paper from the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York argues with a straight face that stimulative monetary policy is bad for racial justice on essentially these grounds. Specifically, Alina Bartscher, Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schu…