"By design" seems like a bit much, but the upper class sure didn't let the crisis go to waste.
Spend $800B so the poors can eat? Hand-wringing and pearl clutching up and down the air waves. Just think of the inflation!
Spend $3000B to pump real estate values? Complete silence, relatively speaking.
This experience made it very clear who was in charge and who wasn't. These are US numbers, but I tend to suspect the same story repeated itself all around the world.
The money spent during COVID ($13tn of various money printing and government intervention) was largely spent into the economy owned by rich people - who do you think owns your mortgage and the banks and your debts and the super markets etc.
The poor still spent most of their money, the rich did not buy more yachts and expensive meals and attending "charity" galas etc. so what would usually be a circular flow became a direct increase in the wealth of the rich and direct decrease in the wealth of the poor. The inflation we see now is going to remain for a while but in the end prices over the next 3-5 years will nearly double and wages will remain the same.
The rich just increased their wealth and the working person got dramatically poorer. Poor people in the UK can't even afford food and Internet but at least the rich have never had it so good. Tax the rich.
Spend $800B so the poors can eat? Hand-wringing and pearl clutching up and down the air waves. Just think of the inflation!
Spend $3000B to pump real estate values? Complete silence, relatively speaking.
This experience made it very clear who was in charge and who wasn't. These are US numbers, but I tend to suspect the same story repeated itself all around the world.