Monied America to the Fed - Thanks for the Free Lunch!

Ashwin Parameswaran (of macroresilience fame) gets into the unholy intersection of financial actors and the Greenspan/Bernanke Put.  To quote

But as I have noted on many occasions, the moral hazard problem from tail-risk hungry TBTF financial institutions is simply the tip of the iceberg. It was not only the banks with access to cheap leverage that were heavily invested in “safe” assets, but also asset managers, money market mutual funds and even ordinary investors. The Greenspan/Bernanke Put incentivises a large proportion of real and financial actors in the economy into taking on more and more tail risk with the expectation that the Fed will avoid any outcomes where these risks will be realised.

Too many commentators fail to recognise that so much of what has made the neo-liberal era a thinly disguised corporate welfare state can be traced to the impact of a supposedly “neutral” macroeconomic policy instrument that in reality has grossly regressive consequences. To expect corporate America to not take advantage of the free lunch offered to it by the Fed is akin to dangling a piece of meat in front of a tiger and expecting it not to bite your hand off.

Sad, but true...