The Poverty Machine: What a Post-Fed America Looks Like Under Project 2025
How Project 2025 weaponizes money, dismantles stability, and engineers exclusion.
by Floyd Webb
How dismantling the Federal Reserve in a racially biased system could turn America into a two-tiered nation.
Introduction: The Illusion of Neutrality
My attention was drawn to the Federal Reserve when the present administration put a target on Lisa Cook’s back. Unlike many federal employees who chose silence or symbolic walkouts in response to online threats, Cook stood her ground. She refused to be intimidated by a tweet. In a moment when Black women in positions of authority are too often singled out, her resolve matters.
It’s also important to note: despite the rhetoric, a President cannot simply fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Governors are confirmed by the Senate to 14-year terms and can only be removed “for cause,” such as misconduct — a standard that would be fiercely contested in court. The President can decline to reappoint someone as Chair when their 4-year leadership term ends, but they remain a governor until their full term expires. Announcing “you’re fired” may play well politically, but it carries no legal weight.
That targeting — and Cook’s refusal to bend — led me to ask bigger questions about the Fed: its history, its purpose, and the battles now swirling around it. I began this process first to inform myself, and then to inform others. For me, it is always critical thinking first; emotional fulfillment is a secondary concern. I don’t do this Substack for clicks; I do it to educate myself. And in turn, I hope to influence and educate others — to encourage at least an understanding of the struggle ahead of us. Because make no mistake: this struggle will not be settled on the internet. It will not be settled on Substack. The basis of our organization must be factual, not emotional.
The Federal Reserve has long been cast as a technocratic institution, neutral and insulated from politics. But what happens when that insulation is stripped away—not just weakened, but removed entirely?
“What happens when monetary policy becomes a political weapon, wielded in a society already fractured by race and class?”
This is not an abstract question. Project 2025, the policy blueprint crafted by the Heritage Foundation and embraced by the Trump movement, calls for exactly that: weakening or even abolishing the Federal Reserve, narrowing its powers, and shifting control to elected officials. On paper, it sounds like discipline. In practice, it’s a recipe for what can only be called economic apartheid—a two-tiered system where stability is reserved for some, and exclusion is engineered for others.
The Federal Reserve: Origins and Purpose
The Federal Reserve was created in 1913, after repeated financial panics — most dramatically the Panic of 1907 — exposed the fragility of a system without a central authority. Its founding goals were straightforward: provide stability, regulate the money supply, and act as a lender of last resort so that bank failures would not ripple into full-blown depressions. Structured as a federation of 12 regional reserve banks overseen by a Washington-based Board, the Fed was deliberately designed to balance national oversight with regional representation, while remaining insulated from day-to-day politics.
Over the decades, its role expanded. In the 1930s, after being blamed for worsening the Great Depression, Congress centralized its powers and linked its mission to employment and growth. The Employment Act of 1946 and the Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1978 gave it a formal “dual mandate”: pursue both price stability and maximum employment. Since then, the Fed has been cast as the “shock absorber” of American capitalism — intervening in crises from the Savings & Loan collapse to the 2008 financial meltdown to the COVID-19 pandemic. Imperfect and far from neutral, the Fed nevertheless remains the institutional guardrail preventing financial shocks from becoming social catastrophes — a guardrail that Project 2025 seeks to dismantle.
The Fed’s Flaws: Steel-Manning the Critique
To be clear, the Federal Reserve is not a paragon of virtue. Its history is checkered with mistakes—from tightening credit during the Great Depression, to enabling the conditions that led to the 2008 crash. Its decisions often prioritize bank stability over full employment, and its insulation from politics can create a deficit of democratic accountability.
The call for reform is not without merit. Some conservatives argue that a rules-based system would prevent the Fed’s own history of political capture and disastrous errors. But replacing a flawed shock absorber with a rigid, brittle system is a cure far worse than the disease.
“Replacing a flawed shock absorber with a rigid, brittle system is a cure far worse than the disease.”
The solution proposed by Project 2025 is not reform—it is demolition. And demolition would amplify these flaws into existential threats for the most vulnerable.
This demolition would not be a leap into a new future, but a return to a past we have already lived—and one that failed catastrophically.
Historical Parallels: What We Tried Before
We’ve been here before:
The pre-Fed “free banking” era (1837–1863) was marked by instability, regional currencies, and wild inequality—an early example of how fragmented monetary authority can leave the vulnerable exposed.
The post-Reconstruction South weaponized economic exclusion through debt peonage, land theft, and redlining—a preview of how the dismantling of federal oversight could allow modern-day exclusion to flourish.
Globally, IMF structural adjustment programs imposed austerity that dismantled safety nets across the Global South, showing how external economic “discipline” almost always translates into internal suffering for the most vulnerable.
“The post-Reconstruction South weaponized economic exclusion through debt peonage, land theft, and redlining—a preview of how dismantling federal oversight could allow modern-day exclusion to flourish.”
The Fed was created precisely because unregulated banking failed catastrophically. Project 2025 is not innovation—it is regression.
How Political Weaponization Works
Imagine a Congress facing reelection ordering the Treasury to print new money for sweeping tax cuts or stimulus checks, with no regard for inflation. Or picture a hostile administration deliberately raising interest rates to spike unemployment and weaken organized labor.
Without the Fed’s independence, monetary policy becomes a weapon of political convenience or vengeance—hurting those least able to protect themselves.
Life Without the Fed: Ten Years Out
Technocrat’s Fantasy
A rigid rules-based system (like the gold standard) theoretically enforces discipline by tying money to a fixed asset. Proponents argue this would prevent the Fed’s own history of political capture and mistakes. But the gold standard’s brutal inflexibility prevents a responsive money supply, inevitably leading to deflationary spirals that crush wages, handcuff growth, and make debt burdens unbearable during downturns.
Political Reality
More likely, politicians manipulate monetary levers for short-term advantage, producing cycles of inflation, unemployment, and instability. Poverty deepens, safety nets shrink, and wealth gaps widen.
Catastrophic Failure
Hyperinflation or cascading bank failures trigger a collapse of trust in the dollar. The U.S. loses its reserve currency status. Inequality hardens into a caste system of permanent exclusion.
Race, Class, and the Economics of Exclusion
Now layer in unmitigated racial and class bias:
Banking Access: Without federal guardrails, banks redline freely, cutting off credit to entire neighborhoods.
Employment: Black and Brown workers remain “last hired, first fired,” with no federal mandate to soften the blow.
Housing: Mortgages vanish for marginalized communities, fueling gentrification and displacement.
Safety Nets: Shrinking budgets slash Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance.
Policing: Poverty is criminalized; desperation is met with handcuffs, not help.
Human Example: Consider a single mother in Atlanta working a service job. A recession hits. Without the Fed’s employment mandate, she loses her job. Her bank collapses, wiping out her savings. SNAP benefits are cut. Police patrols in her neighborhood increase, treating her survival strategies as criminal acts.
“This is the circuitry of the Poverty Machine: lost jobs, collapsed savings, slashed benefits—criminalized instead of supported.”
Enter Project 2025
Project 2025 makes this dystopia not only possible but policy-ready. Among its proposals:
Weaken or Abolish the Fed — shifting monetary power to politicians.
Return to the Gold Standard — shackling the economy to a deflationary system.
End Lender-of-Last-Resort Protections — leaving depositors vulnerable to bank failures.
Each of these measures would disproportionately harm the communities least able to withstand them.
Neoliberalism’s Authoritarian Mutation
To understand Project 2025, we must see it not as a rejection of neoliberalism, but as its logical and terrifying evolution: the merger of deregulated markets with authoritarian state power.
Neoliberalism—an ideology that once promised “freedom” through deregulated markets and austerity—has, since the 2008 crisis, shed its democratic pretenses. The consent of the governed, manufactured by the promise of prosperity, has eroded. So now, coercion takes its place.
“The consent of the governed, manufactured by the promise of prosperity, has eroded. So now, coercion takes its place.”
Markets enforced through state power—privatization and deregulation paired with expanded policing and surveillance.
Racialized exclusion—not hidden, but explicit, as safety nets are dismantled and poverty is criminalized.
From globalism to fortress capitalism—capital remains mobile, but labor is immobilized by borders, voter suppression, and economic exclusion.
Project 2025 represents this mutation. It is not a break from neoliberalism but its authoritarian mask—a system where markets remain free for the powerful, while state violence secures their dominance.
The Poverty Machine in Motion
In ten years under such a regime, poverty would not just persist—it would be engineered. Wealthier households would insulate themselves with assets in gold, crypto, and offshore banks. Black, Brown, and working-class families would be left exposed to every crisis.
This is not a bug of Project 2025. It is the feature.
Remedies: Building When Leaders Lack Ethics
If leaders lack moral and ethical principles, remedies cannot depend on their goodwill. They must be designed as if morality will not return on its own.
Defensive Measures
Protect the Fed’s independence through legislation.
Expand its mandate to explicitly include reducing racial and class inequality.
Litigate bias in lending, housing, and employment.
Building Measures
Public banks: following the model of the Bank of North Dakota, which has successfully supported local businesses and communities for over a century.
Mutual aid networks: expanding solidarity economies proven effective during the COVID-19 pandemic, when state systems faltered.
Local currencies: like BerkShares in Massachusetts, which keep wealth circulating within communities.
Cooperatives: from housing co-ops to worker-owned businesses, building durable community wealth.
Cultural power: film, art, and journalism that expose exclusion and mobilize resistance.
“The strategic priority is clear: defensive measures buy time, but building alternatives is the essential work of creating counter-power—power that can endure and provide sustenance even when the state itself becomes adversarial.”
Conclusion: What Future Do We Choose?
The fight over the Fed is not about defending an institution without flaws. It is about whether we will face economic crises with tools to soften the blow—or whether we will dismantle those tools and weaponize instability against the already marginalized.
If Project 2025 succeeds, the U.S. will not resemble a democracy. It will resemble a two-tiered economic system—stable at the top, precarious at the bottom, exclusion enforced by design.
The remedies will not come from leaders who lack ethics. They will come from us—from building structures, communities, and cultures that embed equity, resist exploitation, and demand accountability.
And here we can return to Lisa Cook. Faced with targeted intimidation, she did not walk away; she refused to bend. Her resolve is a reminder that integrity still matters, and that resistance is possible even when the odds are stacked. In this moment, as the Fed itself comes under attack, her example is not just symbolic — it is instructive.
“The question is not whether we can afford the Fed. The question is whether we can afford to surrender our futures to a poverty machine designed to operate without mercy.”
Suggested Reading for Context and Action
Thomas Piketty — Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Quinn Slobodian — Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism
Naomi Klein — The Shock Doctrine
Stephanie Kelton — The Deficit Myth
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor — Race for Profit
David Harvey — A Brief History of Neoliberalism
Heather McGhee — The Sum of Us
Action Resources: Building Alternatives Now
Public Banking Institute (publicbankinginstitute.org)
The Democracy Collaborative (democracycollaborative.org)
Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ilsr.org)
National Black Food & Justice Alliance (blackfoodjustice.org)
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (mutualaiddisasterrelief.org)
New Economy Coalition (neweconomy.net)