Fed monetary policy didn’t cause racial inequality and can’t do much to cure it

Fed monetary policy didn’t cause racial inequality and can’t do much to cure it

American liberals have taken a skeptical view of central banks going back to the early days of the republic, when Jefferson opposed the chartering of a “national bank” that he feared would favor the economic interests of merchants and manufacturers over yeoman farmers.Support our journalism. Subscribe today.arrow-rightAt the end of the 19th century, populist William Jennings Bryan crusaded against the hard-money men eager to sacrifice the heavily indebted farmer on “a cross of gold.” The creation of the Federal Reserve by progressive reformers in 1913 was meant as a democratic check on the power of Wall Street tycoons, but the old suspicions quickly resurfaced when the Fed moved to tighten credit rather than loosen it during the early days of the Great Depression. In recent decades, liberals have seen the