Besides coughing our lungs up, Americans have been letting envy and greed eat our heart out since March as we’ve watched the rich get richer, even as very little work or spending is being done across the land. There is a reason for this anti-gravity act. Following is a recap of the vampire octupus Trumpvirus has made of the Federal Reserve, which is supposed (by its charter) to be the heart that pumps the blood-money through the struggling, inflamed veins of the body politic:

“On Friday, President Donald Trump announced he will be nominating Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, sparking an outcry from economists who consider him overtly partisan and unqualified for the role. And according to Bloomberg News, Moore hardly pushed back on the notion that he was unsuited to govern one of the most powerful economic institutions in the United States: “I’m kind of new to this game, frankly, so I’m going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the Fed operates, how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions,” Moore, 59, said on BTV. “It’s hard for me to say even what my role will be there, assuming I get confirmed.” He also tweeted on Friday, thanking Trump “for the opportunity to serve & for your zealous commitment to freeing the American economic engine from government overreach & oppressive taxation!” Moore’s admission that he will have to learn as he goes how the Fed works is not confidence-inspiring. Nor is his apparent belief that he could use his position at the Fed to “free” the economy from “oppressive taxation” — the Fed doesn’t control tax rates, it controls interest rates, and it technically doesn’t even directly do that. Indeed, Moore does not have the typical qualifications of a Fed appointee, the vast majority of whom have a PhD in economics. Moore has a Master of Arts degree from the famously right-wing George Mason University and served as a fellow at the also famously right-wing Heritage Foundation. He has advised several GOP campaigns, including Trump’s, and co-wrote a book with conservative economist Art Laffer titled “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy.” Moore is a proponent of supply-side economics, the theory that tax breaks for billionaires and corporations will increase investment and production to the point that prices fall for everyone else — which has broadly failed but nonetheless forms the backbone of the Republican Party’s economic agenda. As a pundit, he has made some spectacularly wrong predictions, like that the U.S. was risking hyperinflation during the Obama years and that ACA was increasing the deficit. His errors have had human consequences: he helped craft former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cut plan, which essentially wrecked the state.”

— Matthew Chapman, Alternet.org, March 25, 2020

Now jump to the future, like Sybill the Soothsayer. It’s June: Here’s one of our most trustworthy and far-seeing economists, Michael Hudson:

Michael Hudson: “There is only one reason for a stock or bond prices to go up. And that’s because of the flow of funds into the stock market. What had been supporting the stock market for the last 12 years was very largely stock buybacks by companies using their revenue to sort of close down their business, disinvest and buy their own stocks to at least keep the prices up. Well, what’s flowing into the market right now? Obviously, it’s not corporate profits buying their own stocks, and it’s certainly not popular money coming into the market by small investors thinking that stocks are going to earn more. All this money is coming into the market from the 10 trillion dollar bailout via the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is going out directly and is buying stocks, bonds, junk bonds, mortgages, junk mortgages, all to prop up the value of assets. Now, when it’s putting this money into the stock market, it’s buying stocks that are already issued and have long since —the proceeds have been spent on building factories or enterprises or as means of making money. So none of this bailout money, none of this 10 trillion going into the stock market has any effect at all on the real economy of production and consumption. It’s solely to support the assets that are held almost eighty five percent by the wealthiest 10 percent of the economy. So the Fed has revived the stock market downturn. It’s come up, and what it said is, ‘Folks, you can bail out of the stock market, give us your junk bonds.’ That’s sort of like the Statue of Liberty for wealthy people. Give us your stocks. Sell your bonds. We’ll buy them all up at Federal Reserve expense and will purchase them. And we’ll also do our own forward buying to manipulate the stock market by promising to buy our stock, so the higher price in the forward market. So that’s going to create a speculative demand for stock. So the speculative demand for stocks by Federal Reserve manipulation and the actual flow of funding money into the stock market from the government has been pushing it back up, giving the illusion of prosperity, at least for the 10 percent.”

Paul Jay: “But are they actually straightforwardly buying stocks to they’re buying corporate debt, which allows them to go buy their own stocks and also just making so much money, so cheap people can buy stock? But is the Fed actually straightforwardly buying stock?“

Michael Hudson “That’s what it said it’s been doing.”

— Michael Hudson in conversation with Paul Jay, June 2 2020, on nakedcapitalism.com

Now, it’s August: the stock market has puffed itself up like a Salzburger knorckerl. Apple is worth 2 trillion dollars, dollars which didn’t even exist yesterday! Shouldn’t we all be glad prosperity is here to stay, even when there is no economic activity on the horizon? Is there any economic force, asks the View, that could ever collapse such a light and perfectly-baked souffle? Sybill, should we all just succumb to affluenza?

Sybill the Soothsayer: You idiot! On November 4th, the day after Joe Biden is elected, that ignoramus Moore could get a call from Donald Trump, and bring the whole world economy to its knees, with a single barked command into his office intercom: “Sell.”