Alan von Altendorf

To Monetize or Not to Monetize: Who Cares?

Andy, you were on solid ground until this leap of screwball logic:

"The Fed’s decisions about monetizing Treasury debt make no difference. Therefore, when the Treasury does a so-called bailout, it would make no difference whether that bailout were financed by the public or by the Fed."

When the government seizes a private asset (taxation, fines, forfeiture) there's no confusion about what happened. Bailouts and subsidies do the same work of destruction, not to the firms who were granted a boon, but to their disfavored competitors and would-be competitors. Bailouts sustain incompetents and 'grace-and-favor' power elites, negating the competitive market for private enterprise.