It is true that interest rates effect asset prices but they have complex effect through balance sheets through liabilities and assets. To me the main thing that an accommodative monetary policy does is put people back to work. Since income inequality is surely exacerbated by having a high unemployment and a weak job market that has the most profound negative effects on the most vulnerable individual, to me putting people back to work and seeing a strengthening of the labor market that has a disproportionately favorable effect on vulnerable portions of our population, that's not something that increases income inequality.
There have been a number of studies that have been done recently that have tried to take account of many different ways in which monetary policy, acting through different parts of the transmission mechanism affect inequality and there's a lot of guesswork involved and different analyses can come up with different things. But a pretty recent paper that's quite comprehensive concludes that the -- that Fed policy has not exacerbated income inequality.
