Wall Street banking advocates took exception to a rare mea culpa from a former Federal Reserve official, who on Tuesday dubbed the government’s crisis-era economic stimulus plan as “the biggest Wall Street bailout of all time.”
Andrew Huszar, in an essay, “Confessions of a Quantitative Easer,” said the Fed’s quantitative easing program, begun during the height of the financial crisis in 2008, lined the pockets of Wall Street’s biggest banks rather than helping reignite an economy swooning from the housing implosion.
“Despite the Fed’s rhetoric, my program wasn’t helping to make credit any more accessible for the average American,” Huszar, a former Morgan Stanley trader, wrote in an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal.
“Sorry, US taxpayer,” wrote Huszar, who spearheaded the Fed’s multitrillion-dollar bond-buying program.
Huszar’s criticism of the policies aren’t new. Other officials, some even within the Fed, have questioned the merits of the program.
Wall Street critics also have included BlackRock money manager Rick Rieder, who has referred to QE as a “large and dull hammer.”
However, industry officials who spoke to The Post said that although they think QE hasn’t been 100 percent successful, they don’t think banks have been the biggest beneficiaries of the controversial program.
“The banking industry doesn’t feel like it’s being helped by QE,” said Wayne Abernathy, an executive VP at bank lobbying group the American Bankers Association.