MAGA's March Toward a Command Economy(insights.som.yale.edu) |
MAGA's March Toward a Command Economy(insights.som.yale.edu) |
As long as we have the heavy-handed Federal Reserve - tilting the game to pick winners and losers - we don’t have free-market capitalism.
Funny enough, I heard an interview with Robert Reich early today about his new book. I didn’t hear the full interview but in the time I listening he didn’t get close to naming the Fed. I was dumbfounded.
The truth is, the socioeconomic system and the sociopolitical system sits on a foundation. That foundation is the financial system. The Fed sits at the head of the table of the financial system. The Fed pulls the levers. The Fed shakes the snow globe.
Also, I'd argue the bond market is far more powerful than the Fed. The Fed can set short term target rates, but the bond market sets longer term rates. The bond market is what kept this admin in check earlier in the year. One might say they are the Fifth Estate, after journalism and the three branches of US government. "Whoever holds the gold makes the rules."
https://tisegroup.com/news/2025/the-power-of-the-bond-market...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/12/what-to-k...
https://www.bloomberg.com/explainers/bond-vigilantes | https://archive.today/XcRIq
> Have bond vigilantes influenced government decision-making before?
> Yes. In fact, they’ve already influenced Trump’s decision-making. In the hours after Trump’s long-awaited tariffs on most imports to the US went into effect on April 9, the bond market tanked. Many investors, concerned that the duties would accelerate inflation and reduce foreign demand for US assets, started dumping their holdings in order to pressure the administration to reverse course.
> It worked: Just 13 hours after the tariffs had gone into effect, Trump announced that he would pause them, and yields came down. “The bond market is very tricky,” he conceded. “I was watching it.”
We’re on the general same page (i.e., conventional wisdom is wrong) but I have a counter-point.
Yes, trust is important. Those who have been favored and enriched by the Fed trusts that it will continue to do so (for them). Sum that up over time and we have what we have:
- wider and wider financial inequality
- more money and assets in fewer hands
- excessive federal gov debt
- more frequent bubbles of some sort
- etc.
I’m not so sure the bond market is at fault.