Mechanize the Fed

How our economic system really works

Here’s an economist joke, or at least a joke that I imagine economists would make if they were more honest with themselves about how silly their so-called “science” is:

“What’s the best way to absolutely maximize GDP?”

“A nuclear war!”

(If you don’t understand this joke, here’s a picture book written in the style of Doctor Seuss that will thoroughly explain it to you.)

In a sadly common turn of events, I was recently invited to join a discord server of loudmouthed trolls whose hobbies turned out to be posting porn while threatening to rape each other. Before leaving the server, I made an effort to talk to the less vocal members and discovered during a brief conversation about economics that many of them were completely ignorant about how the Federal Reserve works. In fact… now that I come to think of it, I’ve never met even a single person who understood the methodology about how the Federal Reserve raises or lowers interest rates. Therefore, as a public service, I’d like to offer a simplified explanation of what the Federal Reserve does. (By “simplified,” I mean that my explanation covers basically everything except for quantitative easing.)