Evolution of love

Thoughts on our post-depression economy

In an effort to shorten the depression, the Federal Reserve Bank made money very readily available. They even put the Federal Funds rate to zero. In other words, it cost NOTHING for the nation's largest banks to borrow money from the federal government, and virtually nothing for large companies to borrow money from the banks. Interest rates were really, really low for everyone. The intention was that companies would borrow this money to increase production and create more jobs.
Fat chance. There is no company on the planet that is going to increase production and hire more help when the demand for their products is low. So, the cheap money got borrowed by people to invest in other things. The stock market was really the only place to put money and hope to get any kind of return. So there was a ton of money invested in the stock market, which drove up stock prices and we saw a long beautiful bull market starting in 2010.
Now that the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates a little and ended Quantitative Easing, this period of cheap money for investing is OVER. Which is why the stock market has been so volatile in the last few months.
In addition, there were quite a few companies that used the cheap money to invest in technology that REPLACED WORKERS. So, the money intended to create jobs had, in some cases, helped to permanently eliminate them.