Here’s the long and the short of it from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances as summarized by The Wall Street Journal. These data are pre-Wuhan Virus-related shutdowns, but there’s no reason to expect different outcomes as we reopen, at least in those non-Progressive-Democrat jurisdictions are actually opening.

“[F]amilies at the top of the income and wealth distributions experienced very little, if any, growth” in net worth between 2016 and 2019 “after experiencing large gains between 2013 and 2016,” while “families near the bottom of the income and wealth distributions generally continued to experience substantial gains.”

The Progressive-Democrat-hated 1% made out like bandits, at least relative to our poor, during the last three years of Progressive-Democrat government. It was under the Trump administration that our poor started gaining income and wealth and narrowing the wealth gap.

That improvement was across demographics, too.

Net worth (assets minus debt) increased 32.5% among the lowest income quintile and 30.7% among the second lowest, while declining modestly for the upper crust. … Net worth also increased among blacks (32.1%) and Hispanics (63.6%) compared to whites (4%).

Go figure.

The Federal Reserve Board has resolved to hold interest rates artificially low—as opposed to letting them float with market demand—at least until the economy’s overall inflation rate reaches the Fed’s target rate of 2%.

There are questions concerning whether such a move reduces the Fed’s ability to deal with asset bubbles (whether the Fed should deal with bubbles at all is a separate question) and whether artificially suppressed rates encourage non-market driven levels of risk-taking.

There is, though, a reason why such suppression is simply wrong.

The Fed is (correctly) switching its policy to one of maintaining an inflation band centered on 2%, rather than holding out for a hard 2%.

Interest rates are intrinsically inflationary, though; if the Fed wants to put the economy into that band, it needs to set its benchmark rates at levels that have been historically consistent with a roughly 2% level.

Keeping rates artificially suppressed only removes that intrinsic upward pressure and makes it harder for the economy to reach its target range and stay in it.