Inflation redistributes wealth from the people to the banks? You understand that inflation reduces the value of bank debt, which is almost always nominal. And surely you must know
that tight money has the objectively observed effect of rewarding capitalists and punishing earners (viz. the wealthy parts of the Eurozone, right now).
The bailouts represent money printed and deposited in the accounts of banks. Kind of a fusion of the worst of right and left ideology: devalue everyone else so that the richest get richer. The full magnitude of the money printing is actually much greater than the public has been led to believe, and came out quietly in late 2010.
The Federal Reserve made $9 trillion in overnight loans
to major banks and Wall Street firms during the financial
crisis, according to newly revealed data released
Wednesday. ...
The amount of cash being pumped out to the financial
giants was not previously disclosed. All the loans were
backed by collateral and all were paid back with a very
low interest rate to the Fed -- an annual rate of between
0.5% to 3.5%. ...
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who had
authored the provision of the financial reform law that
required Wednesday's disclosure, called the data that was
released incredible and jaw-dropping.
"The $700 billion Wall Street bailout turned out to be
pocket change compared to trillions and trillions of
dollars in near zero interest loans and other financial
arrangements that the Federal Reserve doled out to every
major financial institution," Sanders said.
Your arguments seriously ignore and misstate what the Federal Reserve actually does.
1. The Fed/govt does not simply deposit money "in the accounts of banks." Under TARP and quantitative easing, the Treasury purchased securities or shares from the banks. Under quantitative easing, the Fed purchased Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities from the banks. Yes, the Fed printed the money to buy those securities, but it't not like they just printed the money and gave the banks free money.
2. Overnight loans are almost irrelevant to your point because they're overnight. They have to be paid back within 24 hours. The $9 trillion dollar figure sounds impressive but that's just the value of all the overnight loans added up. If you make $8.2 billion in loans every day for 3 years (with the 8.2 billion paid back the next day and then another 8.2 billion loaned out again), you get $9 trillion.
Yes, the Fed printed the money to buy those securities,
but it's not like they just printed the money and gave
the banks free money.
That is exactly what they did, because otherwise those securities would not have had the same price on an open market. The Fed paid for worthless holdings and propped up banks by printing trillions, thereby devaluing everyone else's dollars. And they are still doing it, now printing $85B per month ($1T/year) to buy mortgage-backed securities and reinflate the housing bubble. Printing $100 to buy $1 of MBS toxic waste from the banks is direct depositing $99 into their pockets (and causing commensurate dilution of all other dollar holders).
Overnight loans are almost irrelevant to your point
because they're overnight.
Without printing $9 trillion to "inject liquidity" the banks would have gone bust when the capital call came. It was this overnight loan that allowed the banks to socialize the losses while privatizing the gains.
Inflation transfers wealth from savers and creditors to those with first access to newly created money. In our system it is the banks and the federal government that have first access to newly created money.
Actually, anyone can buy Treasuries direct from the auction at no fee. (The government even has a website for it.) Furthermore, the Treasury market is extraordinary tight, so it barely matters who has access to the Fed. Finally, the recent effect of the Fed announcing expansionary programs has been to lower Treasuries values through implied inflation. (Check the charts if you don't believe me.) So I'm not sure how you can be correct to any significant degree.
I don't see how access to the treasury market has bearing. The issue is seigniorage. In our system that mostly happens through fraction reserve banking, mostly independent of government debt.
What are you trying to say that I'm missing?