Send us Fan Mail Do Deficits Make You Rich? The uncomfortable truth: fiscal stimulus creates wealth, not consumer inflation. Sat pondering in a Caribbean bar, thinking about intelligence, the Fed, deficits, and why inflation lives in Wall Street not in your supermarket basket. When the government runs a deficit, it injects reserves into the system, an automatic overdraft with the banking system. Later it issues Treasuries that drain those reserves. Economists call it a swap. Net financial wea...