Government Screwing Savers, Retirees To Keep Secret Wall Street Bailout Going

December 27, 2009

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Government Screwing Savers, Retirees To Keep Secret Wall Street Bailout Going

Courtesy of Henry Blodget at The Business Insider

As PIMCO’s Bill Gross notes in this NYT article on zero-percent interest rates, the Fed’s ongoing Wall Street bailout is coming at a cost: Anyone who has any cash savings is getting screwed.

This includes retirees who did exactly what they were supposed to do–save. Their incomes are now getting clobbered.

Meanwhile, for those who prefer to borrow money, the ongoing bailout has created the world’s easiest way to make $1 billion. Borrow short-term from the taxpayers and lend the same money back to the taxpayers–and get a guaranteed risk-free spread.

Here’s Bill Gross:

“What the average citizen doesn’t explicitly understand is that a significant part of the government’s plan to repair the financial system and the economy is to pay savers nothing and allow damaged financial institutions to earn a nice, guaranteed spread,” said William H. Gross, co-chief investment officer of the Pacific Investment Management Company, or Pimco. “It’s capitalism, I guess, but it’s not to be applauded.”

Mr. Gross said he read his monthly portfolio statement twice because he could not believe that the line “Yield on cash” was 0.01 percent. At that rate, he said, it would take him 6,932 years to double his money.