the stealth $600 billion tax increase

Although most economists are loathe to admit it, inflating the currency really serves as a form of stealth taxation. The entire goal of inflation is to allow the issuer of the currency to buy things with the full initial value of the money being inflated while simultaneously reducing the value of the money held by everyone else. In other words, inflation transfers the value represented by monetary tokens (bills, banking computer data, etc.) from the people who hold old tokens (the bills in your wallet) to the people printing the money (in America, the Fed).
Now, toss in this little bit of goodness:

The Fed usually [sic] manages the economy by adjusting short-term interest rates. With those rates already near zero, Fed officials had to dust off a strategy for boosting the economy that debuted during the darkest days of the financial crisis. The Fed plans to create money, essentially out of thin air, and then pump it into the economy by buying Treasury bonds on the open market. These purchases are to be finished by the end of June, the Fed said.

Stop laughing at the “manages the economy” bit and focus on the emphasized text. What is really going on here?
What is really going on is that the Fed is stealing $600 billion dollars of real value from your pocket and using that value to fund the US Federal government through Treasury bonds. The real transfer of real value goes: You–>Fed–>Government.
It’s a damn tax increase craftily carried out using the finance system.

Shannon Love