What has made central bankers into the exemplar of modern crisis-fighting is the vacuum created by the evisceration of organized labor, the absence of inflationary pressure, and more broadly, the lack of antisystemic challenge. The interventions can be as large as they are because though they have huge material consequences, and though the bond market itself has a real-world presence in the form of traders and computers and legal documents, central bank asset purchases are the equivalent of waving a digital wand.
