| “Our doctors and nurses are being thoroughly mobilized and worked to limit…Many cases receive no attention at all” (Acting Governor Calvin Coolidge, Massachusetts, 9/25/1918) |
“We’re going to keep our small businesses strong and our big businesses strong. And that’s keeping our country strong and our jobs strong.” That’s how President Trump described the Cares Act, the massive so-called pandemic relief bill. That’s not the way most economists describe it. Like the 2008 bailout masterminded by Barack Obama, most of the money will be handed out to banks and large corporations. Everyone else, individual Americans, small businesses, distressed cities and states will nibble from a much smaller pie. Here’s how Trump and his merry band of grifters is going to “keep small businesses strong.” Twenty-seven million small businesses in the U.S. will receive slices of a $300 billion pie. The 18,586 large corporations in the U.S. will feast on $4.3 trillion of government largest, no strings attached. While small businesses can apply for loan forgiveness if they keep their employees on the payroll, corporations are under no such restraint and will not only have their loans forgiven but should their gambling ways get them in trouble again, the Federal Reserve will bail them out — with your money. What’s left for suffering Americans? A one-time means-tested check and a slight increase in both the amount and duration of unemployment, a ninety-day extension of the IRS filing date, and a three-month grace period on student loans (you’ll still have to pay but those months will be tacked onto the end of your loan), That’s it folks. What happens the second month after you’ve spent your government check? Will you be able to pay the rent or mortgage, your credit card bills, your utilities bills? Large corporations won’t have any problem meeting their obligations, with the help of an obliging Fed banker and four (or five or six) trillion to keep those sky-high paychecks, extravagant bonuses and shareholder windfalls coming. And we can’t even go out in the streets to protest. For the chilling details check out “Business as Usual: Trillions in Disaster Relief for Corporations and Banks, Spare Change for People, Hospitals, Small Businesses, State and Local Governments”
