Bailout Is Bad News for Savers

Not fed up enough with just putting your taxpayer dollars directly on the line to bail out the nation’s banks? Allan Sloan has latched on to some insidious “collateral damage” from the government’s rescue plan, those trillions spent “to keep interest rates down to support the economy and prop up housing prices.” That’s all well and good, he writes, until you realize that returns on traditional investments for fixed-income folk have taken a nosedive.

“It's a direct wealth transfer from savers and retirees to overly indebted borrowers,” an analyst tells Sloan, writing in the Washington Post. Some bank CDs are off 40% since 2007, while some Treasury investments yield less than 10% of what they did. The Fed has taken taxpayer money to radically remake the financial landscape for the benefit of banks, and to the detriment of those bankrolling the move. “A nice reward from their government for a lifetime of saving,” Sloan writes. “Thanks for nothing, guys.” (More Allan Sloan stories.)