The Lords of Easy Money cover art

The Lords of Easy Money

How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Lords of Easy Money

By: Christopher Leonard
Narrated by: Jacques Roy
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £14.03

Buy Now for £14.03

About this listen

 The New York Times bestseller from 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 here, for the first time, is the inside story of how the Fed has reshaped the American economy for the worse. It all started on November 3, 2010, when the Fed began 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 the 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 a few short months.

Which brings us to now: Ten years on, the gap between the rich and poor has grown dramatically, inflation is raging, and the stock market is driven by boom, busts, and bailouts. Middle-class Americans seem stuck in a stage of permanent stagnation, with wage gains wiped out by high prices even as they remain buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student debt. Meanwhile, the “too big to fail” banks remain bigger and more powerful than ever while the richest Americans enjoy the gains of a hyper-charged financial system.

The Lords of Easy Money “skillfully” (The Wall Street Journal) tells the “fascinating” (The New York Times) tale of how quantitative easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the one man who tried to warn us. This is the first inside story of how we really got here—and why our economy rests on such unstable ground. Banks & Banking Economic History Economics Money Banking Economic Inequality
All stars
Most relevant
brilliant book about the corruption of the modern economy. The Fed directly elected Donald Trump

excellent analysis for the comman man

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Absolutely brilliant book on the FED and the financial crises. Written in terms that a layman can grasp.

Superb

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Good read, provides a very good account of the activities of the FED in the past decade. Full of information which I and probably many others have largely missed due to the following of daily news on the pandemic rather than the groundbreaking schemes the FED has introduced.

Very interesting read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A great account of what the US Fed has been doing to the markets and economy’s, and how the rich and big banks can get basically free money. While the general public can’t.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book is a superb listen/read I cannot recommend enough. One would hope that this would be taught in schools as of yesterday.. truly eye opening and well articulated, with a clear story line to aid the narration.

A must read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews