Here is the bailout brick congress just laid
Some of this might not be true or things will change, but let's look at what we are getting:
NO rent freeze
NO student debt forgiveness
ONE time payment
$1200 per person
NO money until May
Money will be taxed
Am I being charged interest? Do some have to pay this back? Is this a loan? Cuz it’s def not relief -it’s a bullshit attempt at shutting us up. #stimulusbill— Thia is with Bernie (@ThiaBallerina) March 25, 2020
Unsanitized: Bailouts, A Tradition Unlike Any Other
First Response
Twelve years ago, banks asked for a bailout after years of irresponsible, highly leveraged lending. The Treasury Department put out a three-page term sheet seeking money from Congress with no strings attached, even eliminating judicial review. Democrats balked, called it a slush fund and worse, then agreed after a few mostly meaningless bits of oversight and some promises to help ordinary people. That $700 billion bailout was window dressing for trillions that came from the Federal Reserve, but it kept Congress quiet, hooking them into the rescue of the system.
Twelve years later, virtually the same course of events is taking place. After just a couple weeks of extreme social distancing measures, the Treasury Department asked for a large bailout, this time of the entire corporate sector. The bill as written initially would have made all bailout activities secret for six months. Democrats balked, called it a slush fund and worse, and then agreed to a few mostly meaningless bits of oversight and some promises to help ordinary people. In fact they’re the same bits of oversight from the 2008 TARP bailout: a five-member oversight panel and an inspector general for the program.
The enormity of this bailout is being under-reported. The number you’re hearing is $500 billion. Of that, $75 billion goes to the airline industry and the mysteriously named “businesses critical to national security.” The other $425 helps capitalize a $4.25 trillion, with a T, leveraged lending facility at the Federal Reserve. The taxpayer dollars would soak up any losses from that lending program. The loans won’t be secret anymore, but the oversight is largely after the fact, without subpoena power, and mainly reduced to writing reports. How exactly do you expect a small, underfunded panel to find fraud in a $4.25 trillion lending facility! Especially when the current administration explicitly believes they are not required to turn over anything to Congress.
So it’s not a $2 trillion bill, it’s closer to $6 trillion, and $4.3 trillion of it comes in the form of a bazooka aimed at CEOs and shareholders, with almost no conditions attached. At the moment nobody’s seen language, but there’s apparently only a buyback ban for the term of the loan. The money cannon can therefore go to executive compensation or mergers or wholesale purchases of distressed businesses or whatever other financial engineering the accounting department can muster. And once the company returns to health, it can leak out cash to investors (and during the loan too, in dividends). There’s no requirement to keep workers hired; in fact, the (necessary) provision to boost unemployment insurance for four months to 100 percent of median salary (including furloughed workers, gig workers and freelancers) means that these companies can fire with relative impunity. Members of Trump’s family can’t get bailout funds, so, yay.
This is a robbery in progress. And it’s not a bailout for the coronavirus. It’s a bailout for twelve years of corporate irresponsibility that made these companies so fragile that a few weeks of disruption would destroy them. The short-termism and lack of capital reserves funneled record profits into a bathtub of cash for investors. That’s who’s being made whole, financiers and the small slice of the public that owns more than a trivial amount of stocks. In fact they’ve already been made whole; yesterday Wall Street got the word that they’d be saved and stocks and bonds went wild. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is running these bailout programs for the Fed, and could explicitly profit if the Fed buys its funds, which it probably will.
....
Progressives I’ve talked to on the Hill are apoplectic. “Temporary survival money for workers, trillions in permanent economic inequality saving a bunch of executives and elites,” said one House Democratic aide. There’s particular anger reserved for the big show made of the House Democratic bill, a sideshow that never was part of the Senate-side negotiation.
....
Democrats will instead whine from the sidelines as money is pushed into the hands of corporate elites. That’s the way they like it: no agency and ineffectual grandstanding. Someday Larry Kudlow will write a book called Firefighting about how he saved the economy in between board meetings of the six companies left in the country. And we’ll wonder how things got so off track. Don’t wonder.
Matt Stoller has been warning that the bailout is a corporate coup.
People are not internalizing what is happening. A $6 trillion credit allocation to Wall Street isn't a corporate handout, it's a coup. These numbers are a thorough restructuring of America. https://t.co/ReYBRJNA7q
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 24, 2020
What Matt means:
$6 trillion at 0% interest means you can buy up America, the world really, and essentially rent it back out to the peasants at 2%, 4%, 10%, 20% by buying Treasuries, housing, real estate, MBSs, REITs, ETFs, stocks, natural resources, etc. etc..
I commented on this last night:
Nailed it. This is what Obama did for the banks too. He allowed blackrock the biggest hedge fund to buy up foreclosed homes for pennies on the dollar and they took and kept them off the market blowing up housing prices and rents. Blackrock and others became slum landlords and raise rents while not keeping their properties safe and up to code. And golly gee they are going to do it again.
Saagar on vapid navel gazing: He interviews two people who have been affected by being fired.
How many people are telling this same story? They will cover as many as they can.
Dems are being applauded for sticking up to the republicans and saving the working class. Blehh. I just don't understand their tribalism and blindness.
This is a bad deal. People are not going to be saved by getting $1,200 per person once and the cutoff for help is $75,000. No cut off for the corporations that have buying their stocks back after they got their huge tax cuts. None of the money went into raising worker's wages. BTW Obama did not raise the federal wage during his tenure. In fact he put a freeze on federal wages for 2 years after the great bank implosion happened. And he did not put a freeze on giving bank CEOs huge raises.
Tiny violin for someone making $75K+ not getting a full $1200 kicker.
Yeah F you and the horse you rode in on. $75,000 doesn't go far in states where mortgages and rents are above $2-3,000.
Someone posted the above article. The response:
Don't Interrupt Dem bashing with facts.
I am awaiting a spate of diaries quoting Intercept, Common Dreams, Jacobin and such that will pick one disagreeable thing and hype it to show how Democrats are bad.
At least we were left out of this one.
F this person too. It's a bad bill that doesn't go far enough to help people who are hurting and might lose everything. What will congress do when millions more are homeless? Probably just ignore it like they have been ignoring the millions now that are.
Comments
Of course they are
GOP Senate Trio Threatens to Delay Stimulus Bill Because Unemployment Benefits Amid Pandemic Are Too Generous
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Tim Scott, and Ben Sasse on Wednesday threatened to delay the Senate's multi-trillion-dollar coronavirus stimulus bill because they believe the legislation's unemployment provisions are too generous.
In a joint statement, the GOP senators claimed there is "a massive drafting error in the current version of the coronavirus relief legislation could have devastating consequences: Unless this bill is fixed, there is a strong incentive for employees to be laid off instead of going to work."
As Vox's Matt Yglesias noted on Twitter, "That's not how layoffs work. You can quit your job, but then you're not eligible for [unemployment insurance]. You can't lay yourself off."
The trio of Republicans went on to say that they "must sadly oppose the fast-tracking of this bill until this text is addressed, or the Department of Labor issues regulatory guidance that no American would earn more by not working than by working."
Grrr! I am taking Charlie for a walk. Stay well folks.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
That's all they know how to pass any more
Of course it is. It's just enough for them to look like they pretend to give a shit about people.
This shit is bananas.
South Carolina
Let me be the first to congratulate you on the representation you so richly deserve. I take my hat off to you for having the foresight and fortitude to elect (again and again) that paragon for the people...let's hear it for Sen. Lindsey Grahaaaaammmm!!!
Save your applause until after we recognize Tim SCOTT!!
Well done is better than well said-Ben Franklin
Don't forget...
South Carolina resuscitated Joe Biden's moribund campaign and put him and his Early-Stage Alzheimer's on the fast track to the Democratic nomination and another Democratic loss to Trump. Yay!!!!
This is not early stage Joementia
Please allow a medical professional to repeat a point made many times by the Swamp Healer, notable Alligator, Professor Doktor who provides any who will attend to my ravings, that by the time non-professionals recognize a person is demented, that person is in the late Early phase or early Middle phase of dementia. Furthermore AD is a disease and is not synonymous with dementia. Dementia is a condition caused by multiple ailments of which AD is only one of many.
Dementia is categorized by mental status examinations. Two bedside, i.e., easily administered such testing instruments, are the MiniMental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MCoA). Early middle stage dementia results from a 19 or 20 point score out of a maximum of 30; 30 being cognitively intact.
So please, brush up on your
Shakespeareer, medicine. If anybody thinks JoJo is in the early phases of dementia, they are mistaken.They also want to
stop companies from paying the payroll tax, which will gut SS, which I am dependent on. This is another rethuglican coup.
Read this article from Romney's campaign manager. Rare honesty.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/18/elections-have-conseq...
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
As a history major I always thought this was newsworthy
https://www.ssa.gov/history/Gulick.html
Well done is better than well said-Ben Franklin
Yes, rare honesty
"Read this article from Romney's campaign manager. Rare honesty."
And to be honest...that article scares the sht outta me, because NOW the Rethugs have a moment of reflection? Sht must REALLY be getting ready to hit the fan.
Well done is better than well said-Ben Franklin
Just wait!
It’s coming!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
I've gotten lots of flack for saying that companies
want to stop paying payroll taxes and yet here we are. Huh...
Here's Bernie's tweet linked below.
Replies
"And I don't care how many people have to die to get my way"
"Bernie Sanders proving why he shouldn't be President."
"He could have done these negotiations BEFORE, but he was the ONLY senator not in Washington. This is bad leadership. This delay only hurts people."
Bernie wasn't in DC because his vote wasn't necessary to just be there to vote for cloture. But then any chance to deride him and people will take it.
"Great. Just what the people need right now -- more partisan gridlock."
No asswipe it's because the bailout is lopsided.
"Biden and votenomatterwho/blue resistors are so confused that they are blaming Bernie for holding up the senate. The brainwashing is so severe that many can no longer think for themselves."
True. Last time congress we formed occupy Wall Street. But right now people can't get out to protest. Just wait congress cuz if you don't pass a better bill millions of people are going to have lots of time on their hands.
Lindsay thinks that nurses get paid enough already and if this goes through then they will just quit their jobs. I'm sure he's not dumb enough not to understand how unemployment benefits work.
Thanks, Bernie. Do it. Close this mother down and get something better for us.
BTW have you guys heard about a woman named Tara who says that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her back in the '90's? Rising talked about this today. Warren accused Bernie of being sexist and the media went wild with it. No word from them yet on this Biden scandal.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Wait
Is he saying that if Graham stops holding up unemployment benefits then he will be okay with where it stands now? If so then that's not good enough. He needs to hold it until there is more help for the working class. He has to know what Dayum is saying in this article I posted. Don't do it, Bernie.
Anyone following Tulsi know if she has said anything about this?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
I think she will be on "Rising" tomorrow...
Bernie's response
So Bernie is taking the opposite position to Lindsay Graham:
Unless Republican Senators drop their objections to the coronavirus legislation, I am prepared to put a hold on this bill until stronger conditions are imposed on the $500 billion corporate welfare fund.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1242896476872806402
And if you check the responses to Bernie's tweet, it looks as if Biden is praising Tramp's response. SMDH.
I'm sure spineless Schumer
Will turn himself inside out to remove the extra month of unemployment coverage.
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
He's not spineless
He's Wall Streets senator. He probably stood up to the other dems to make sure the bill had everything the fat cats wanted.
Schumer's still spineless.
Bernie is now fighting--like he should have done in 2016 and earlier in this year's Klown Kavalcade. Can this be his path to redemption for kissing the ring and hind parts of the Giant Rat of Chappaqua? I hope so.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZTzHXSmRfk&frags=pl%2Cwn]
Really, Bernie's response isn't much better than the Dems'.
Stronger conditions? Screw that. Expose it for what it is, a $4.5 TRILLION bailout. Loans my ass, this is an outright gift. Just let them sink into oblivion, buy them out, and have the general population become the damned owners.
As for the airlines, let them die, along with Boeing. Why should taxpayers support a white elephant that makes pandemics worse?
Where's the proof that companies even need money
right now? How can they be failing in just a few months? I'm betting that they are sitting pretty on lots of cash, but they are just getting it for the reasons listed.
Gee if only they hadn't bought back all those stocks and set some aside for a rainy day just like people think we could have.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
I think there's proof they don't.
I think it was Boeing who said that, if money received required them to turn over a stake in the company to the government, they didn't want the money. To me, that's proof positive that they don't need it.
However, letting companies crash, and then buying up a controlling interest in the company, would allow for kicking out the execs and resurrecting them as transformed organizations in which the stakeholders (and shareholders) are literally the American people.
Great point on Boeing not needing money
if the cost is too high for them. They shouldn't be getting any anyway because while they were trying to fix their problems and making their planes safe to fly again they were busy buying up their stocks.
I think any company that did that with their huge tax breaks shouldn't get even $1. This is why people are so upset about how much money companies are getting. And they should have to show how much money they have right now and why they need a bailout. Let's do means testing on companies for once and forget about it for we the people. Hey, Nancy I'm taking to YOU,
BTW why did hundreds of CEOs retire just before the shit hit the fan? And why did they dump their stocks just before they did? You know like some members of cheating did after they got briefings from financial institutions?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Yes, the real test
F them all and the pythons they slithered on.
Bernie Sanders live stream at 7 pm ET today
on the Covid virus,according to announcement I saw.
live.berniesanders.com
edit to include link
When people say that democrats just had to cave to republicans
they are lying. Schumer didn't have to 'let' McConnell walk all over him. Any democrat that wasn't happy with what was being passed could have placed a hold on it just like republicans did all through Obama's tenure. How many secret holds were there on bills that could have helped us? Many.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
I am accustomed to government policy
being unhelpful, but we have had some recent policy that show an intentional disregard for poor and working peoples' very survival.
Government's reaction to the coronavirus is openly hostile to the poor.
Now, this.
I get the impression the bastards want us dead and gone, and make policy in accordance to their wants.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Bye bye SS
and medicare. Just can't afford it. Here comes cat food (the discount stuff) and bracelets with magnets in them.
Britney!
https://www.jacobinmag.com/blog
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
what's in the bill seems to be a matter of who's writing the
story how depressing. some reports indicated that it's about 'delaying payroll taxes', for one. but the final text hasn't been agreed upon even yet; it's all reported as partisan skirmishes, ugh.
yeah, shcumer: 'unemployment insurance on steroids'. from NPR's coverage:
some claim that's for the unemployed 'furloughed by coronavirus...
except people like me and mr. wd who'll get $600 each, maybe. the 'above $75,000 income is prorated diminishing amounts in the check, or was. grumpulous here, i've read so fooking many versions sine the wapo one early this morning, the most craptastic and vague one imaginable.., such as: 'millions of americans will receive one-time cash payments').
one version claimed that senators would voluntarily give up their pay...'for the duraton'; what: one month? but laughing, i thought it was so the bill wouldn't be called: "We got the gold mine...you got the shaft!" but yeah, all sorts of anti-nepotism clauses, apparently, and no corporations cn use their grift for stock buy-backs. an Inspector General and a congressional committee will Decide who gets the corporate and small business bucks, and all that jazz.
pelosi has either agreed..or not, depending on coverage. she'll go for unanimous consent in the out of session house...or she won't. oh, yeah and when AOC tweets: people listen, as if to EF Hutton. she tweeted 'no unanimous consent: too much corporate payola!' or close. so if that's derailed, it'll be next week end before the house will have voted, or longer.
anyhoo, this may be the closest report to clear and concise i've read, if it's so:
What we know: How the $2T coronavirus stimulus will affect you and the economy, Paul Davidson, USA TODAY, today.
should student debt forgivenss be in this bill? (a la omar presley?)
Corporate friendly dreckle
The poorest among us gets the least amount. The guy who wrote this has blinders on. IMO. I'll stick with David's.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
if you believe i'm disagreeing
that it's a corporate coup post 2008, i'm not.
Once it dawns on the numbskulls in Congress
and the slack-jawed moron in the Oval Office that this isn't going to be over in a month, then what? Are we going to have a "biggest bailout ever" bill monthly for the next 18 months?
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Meanwhile, in the land of tea and crumpets
government to pay 80% of wages
And remember, Boris Johnson was the bad guy. Is it too late to take the royal family back?
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Vlad just told everybody to take a holiday
and that they will get paid while doing so. He also canceled the election for changing Russia's constitution to let him be president for longer. If you see people saying that he is making a power grab tell them it only happens if people say it can. There is so much disinformation about what happens in Russia, but most of the time people don't know what they're talking about.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Bernie Explains the proposed legislation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVm5d7nRaPo&feature=youtu.be
In an address on Youtube tonight Bernie discusses each point in the legislation.
First the measures that are intended to help people and last the giant corporate giveaway.
I found this useful. Maybe some of you will also.
NYCVG
And on the floor this evening...
but in the end,
he voted for the bill. it passed 96-0. and yes, there will undoubtedly be another corporate coup later one, once the Fed's Funny Money fails to end the coming depression.
it's Capitalism/Imperialism 101.
Half or a quarter loaf vs. crumbs (or nothing)
Certain Senators were conspiring to give the peons nothing - which is what Bernie was flaming them about.
In the end, though, it comes down to Hobson's choice (that or nothing at all).
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
And, did you see this about how health insurance companies are..
expected to make out? You know, *in a pandemic*, how would you expect a health insurance company to do? From Wendell Potter, former health insurance exec who saw the light:
Thanks for posting this tweet thread
Potter has been warning us about how the insurance companies are lining up to screw us. The whole thread is a must read.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
I've a feeling those record profits
will disappear once we have so many infected people. The industry won't be able to handle it and collapse, just as our economy is doing. This is a time of reckoning. We're about to find out that no one gets a free ride.
edited to add: this package will not help main street. When things really fall apart, they'll either have to come back and drastically help the people or we will witness devastation to the nth degree. Either way, get the popcorn!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Don't doubt the Inscos will find an out avoiding claims
They will send registered letters to all policy holders with10 pages of fine print verbiage, with the clarity of a Microsoft end user agreement. To wit, on the middle of page 8, it will say: no payments will be made in cases of pandemics.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=invISy0YYZI&frags=pl%2Cwn]
You’re so right, Ed ~
BTW - did you tell us about ibuprofen being bad for Coronavirus patients? Tylenol only? Or is this a falsehood?
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Avoid both Tylenol and ibuprofen if you have COVID-19
Both reduce fever but fever damages the virus through various cytokines.
Tylenol is acetaminophen. In the UK it is paracetamol.