The main redistributional effect was the bailout and lack of criminal indictments. The bailouts made fraudulent mortgage paper money good. The mortgage borrowers had severe declines in the value of their asset, or worse, lost their real estate. The subsequent ten year stagnation from the financial collapse has brutally affected the livelihoods of working people, their financial security, and their ability to trust in a system for retirement savings (if they can even afford to save for retirement). Wage earnings have only now begun somewhat of a climb back. That’s nine years of working people stuck in place or worse off, while the speculator class has been raking it in.
QE is a redistributional mechanism for the reasons I posted earlier. Savers get negative interest rates, financial institutions get guaranteed profitable returns. The distortion of ZIRP has also made corporate investment into R&D, machinery, facility, and training a sucker’s game. The best return a corporation can get with low/no cost money is to buy its own stock back, at inflated prices, to make earnings per share look like profits are soaring. The lack of investment in the future of companies means lower productivity going forward, meaning largely lower employment and lower wages. The shareholders and the upper management make out like bandits without having to actually address how to manage their companies for future competitive growth.
