I knew it, I fucking knew it

[xoxoxoBruce]

I not only knew it would happen I called it days ago...

Behind the scenes, airlines, cruise lines, hotel companies and theme parks are already making the case that the government should simply hand over an initial tranche of cash to compensate them for the lost revenue they suffered as a result of government restrictions on travel or large gatherings. That would be a mistake...

Although there is precedent for such grants to the airlines in the 9/11 rescue package, that was a time when airlines were routinely reorganizing under the bankruptcy code. But after 20 years of unchecked consolidation, the airlines — along with hotel operators and theme parks — have become disciplined oligopolies characterized by high prices and profits. They should get no better deal from the government than if they were seeking capital from Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.

That’s not all the government should demand. Until the government gets its money back, the companies should be prevented from paying any executive more than $2 million a year in salary, bonus and stock incentives, which would be a comedown for the chief executives of nearly all of these companies. They should also be prevented from paying shareholders any dividends or buying back any shares of their stock. And rather than laying off a large number of employees, they should be required whenever possible to institute job-sharing programs so that all employees remain on the payroll part-time until the crisis has passed. The details of these deals should be posted on the Treasury website, along with an audited accounting of when and how the money has been repaid.
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As for the thousands of smaller companies affected by the pandemic, the Small Business Administration should be authorized to guarantee loans made by private banks. Such guarantees, however, should extend only to 75 percent of any loan, insuring that the banks accept the first loss from any loan that is not repaid. Only in that way will banks have sufficient incentive to insure that only creditworthy companies receive the loans. Without such safeguards, the program runs a high risk of becoming a costly and embarrassing boondoggle.
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One would hope that once the rescue is put in place, top executives of the rescued firms would have the good manners to thank taxpayers publicly for helping them through these tough times. And maybe — just maybe — they will have second thoughts the next time they are tempted to complain about excessive government interference in the workings of the free market.

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The Airlines Want A $58 Billion Bailout After Spending $45 Billion On Stock Buybacks

And where did they get $45 Billion? Tax "reform".
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Huge "loopholes" in the coronavirus relief package
In fact, the bill guarantees sick leave only to about 20 percent of workers. Big employers like McDonald’s and Amazon are not required to provide any paid sick leave, while companies with fewer than 50 employees can seek hardship exemptions from the Trump administration.

“If you are sick, stay home,” Vice President Mike Pence said at a news conference on Saturday afternoon. “You’re not going to miss a paycheck.”

But that’s simply not true. Sick workers should stay home, but there is no guarantee in the emergency legislation that most of them will get paid.

The White House and congressional Republicans, who insisted on the exemptions as the price of bipartisan support for the legislation, bear the primary responsibility for the indefensible decision to prioritize corporate profits in the midst of a public health emergency...

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You won't need toilet paper, taxpayer, after this bailout gets shoved up your ass.

[Griff]

That kinda pisses me off.

On the bright side, Donald J Trump seems to have found his footing. The White House has realized that without consumers there is no economy. This run counter to the narrative that runs in my head about the President lacking empathy. This is good news and I'm willing to say it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Empathy for his income is not empathy.

[henry quirk]

[tw]

Originally Posted by Griff

The White House has realized that without consumers there is no economy. This run counter to the narrative that runs in my head about the President lacking empathy.

The president message is that he fixed the economy. Citing the Stock Market and job numbers (a lagging indicator) as proof. He could not even bother to admit the pandemic was coming until the stock market crashed. And governors starting ordering businesses to close. Only then did he realize it was a threat to his reelection - the only thing that matters to The Don. It is always and only about him. No empathy has been demonstrated for anyone else.

[Diaphone Jim]

I predicted a month ago that Bozo and his circus cabinet would make the coming epidemic much worse.
I was right.
Now they are using it so move more money from the poor to the rich.
That is what they do.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim

I predicted a month ago that Bozo and his circus cabinet would make the coming epidemic much worse.

The economy was in recession nine months ago. Before a pandemic made it even worse.

It was expected. For example, tax cuts eventually create recessions. The Fed was repeatedly lowering interest rates that long ago due to a recession.

Many industries (agriculture, industrial metal manufacturing, white appliances, cosmetics, boats, clothing, airplanes, wines, chemical products, meats, whiskey, lumber, auto parts) were already suffering due to trade embargoes - to fix problems that did not exist. Auto product and even some Harley Davidson production was forced out of America due to higher costs created by tariff - that have no purpose. Agricultural trade with China that was once $19 billion was reduced to $9 billion with harm especially suffered by wheat, soybean, nut, berry, orange, and apple producers.

But somehow none of that contributed to recession - if one only recites what he is ordered to believe.

[Undertoad]

President Trump Joins Democrats in Calls to Block Share Buybacks

Well would you look at that

Just look at it

Oh you can't, it's paywalled

[xoxoxoBruce]

I don’t know who made this chart but I’m assuming the distribution numbers are correct.



Right off the top is $153.5 Billion for public health seems reasonable right now.
Student Loans/Other (with an asterisk which means estimated). What’s other, teacher loans?
To pay off existing loans, make more loans, or pay the banks on loans they couldn’t collect?



The individual section, $300B give away and $260B unemployment is pretty clear.



Large Corporations section splits off national security at $17B.
What? Border guards, no they’re budgeted. TSA maybe if they’ve been paid by a ticket surcharge?
Then it splits off $58B for airlines – $25B passenger wages&benefits must be passenger carriers even though they also carry cargo.
Then $4B cargo wages&benefits would be UPS, Fedex, DPL I guess, although they may be plenty busy with online shopping.
$3B for Contractors? Plane maintenance companies? In flight meal providers? Airport maintenance companies? Wouldn’t they be under Small Business or Large Corporations?
$26B for airlines – other? Other airlines or other expenses, that’s a larrrrge number.
But that only leaves $425B for large corporations. I’m sure Boeing, Comcast, McDonalds, Medtronics, walmart, etc, paying their Brass $15 or $20 million need help.



$377B for Small Business takes $10B off the top for Grants. Is that Lester Grants Atlantic station in the center of town? Oh wait, can’t be that’s gone now.
The word grants makes me think of research projects but that’s probably off base. Pretty sure it means give it away though.
$17B relief for existing loans – sounds like bailing small businesses who already are in hock, but my guess it goes to banks (or investment groups) that made bad bets.
The remaining $350B to small businesses in trouble and there’ll be a lot of those.



$339.8B for state& local governments. First $274B for Covid-19 response. Hmm, then what was that $153.5B for public health at the top, I thought that was for the Covid-19?
$5B block grants, are blocks that expensive? Blocks of votes could be.
$13B K-12, they can sure use it. I hope it goes to the ones that really need it but probably won’t.
$44B higher ed. Hopefully community colleges, I don’t think Harvard needs it.
$5.3B family programs? Counseling? Daycare? Guys sticking pins in condoms for making more families?
$28.5B governments other. Federal, state, local, there aren’t any other governments, must be other expenses. More armored cars and riot gear for cops? A fishing cabin on the lake for the mayor? I’m suspicious of this one, ripe for theft.

$26B safety net. Good except the $1.25B other is ripe for abuse. Sounds like small potatoes compared to the numbers above but $1,250,000,000 is far from small potatoes, you could buy a lot of state and local politicians with that.

I'm seeing a lot of opinions on why parts of this will or won't work as intended and plenty of warnings to follow the money and see who's getting their hands on it along it's journey.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, calculates that 80 percent of the tax cuts in the coronavirus relief legislation will go to people making more than $1 million annually—just 43,000 people—and will cost $90 billion in 2020 alone. Even the relief that's nominally supposed to go to small businesses is flowing into the bank accounts of well-financed corporations—a fund meant to keep businesses with less than 500 employees afloat was designed in such a way that huge restaurant chains and a multi-millionaire Trump campaign donor with a large hotel chain are free to collect tens of millions of dollars from it.

For eight American billionaires, their fortunes have ballooned by at least $1 billion during the pandemic. Eric Yuan, for example, is the CEO of the video-conference platform Zoom. Since the outbreak began in China, Zoom's usage worldwide has grown by 1,900 percent, and Yuan's net worth has more than doubled to $7.57 billion in just the last three months. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made $8 billion since March, reportedly by partnering with medical equipment companies, while rural hospitals across the U.S. are going broke and closing down, even as coronavirus is spreading out from urban centers.

No one has made out better than Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and the world's richest man. Since January 1, 2020, his personal wealth has increased by $25 billion, slightly more than the GDP of Iceland or the equivalent of 25 Michael Bloomberg presidential campaigns. Chuck Collins, one of the study's authors, called this surge "unprecedented in modern financial history." And as Amazon stock has soared more than 30 percent this year, CNN wondered if it might be the "ultimate coronavirus-proof stock."

I can't begrudge these guys being in the right place at the right time to make a killing. Except Bezos keeps tweeting about the lock down is bad, I guess the more people hospitalized the more money he makes.

But bastards like this get my goat, especially when only 29% of jobless Americans received any benefits in March.

The government is also taking steps to keep businesses afloat—the Federal Reserve, for example, has announced it will buy almost unlimited amounts of debt to make sure corporations have more cash on hand. Thanks to that, the cruise company Carnival secured $6 billion on April 1. After that, CEO Arnold Donald, who reportedly made $11 million in 2019, told CNBC that the company could stay in business until 2021 even with absolutely no revenue.

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[xoxoxoBruce]

In late March, real estate investment firm Ashford Inc. was on the verge of financial ruin. But it had an ace in the hole: a pair of D.C. lobbying firms stacked with Trump fundraisers and White House alumni.
A few weeks later, Ashford is now the top recipient ($53 million) nationwide of coronavirus relief aid from the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Act.
The Dallas-based Ashford does extensive business in the hotel industry through a pair of real estate investment trusts. Its chairman, Monty Bennett, penned an open letter on March 22 detailing just how devastating the virus had been for his company.
“My industry and our businesses are completely crushed,” he wrote “This pandemic’s economic impact on the hotel industry is worse than all of the previous calamities combined.”
Bennett himself is a huge Trump donor. He’s given over $200,000 to the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, and a joint fundraising committee supporting both of them since last year, according to Federal Election Commission records. He chipped in even more in support of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Twelve days before Bennett wrote that open letter, Ashford had beefed up its political muscle even more. It hired its first-ever Washington lobbying firm, Miller Strategies. That firm is run by Jeff Miller, who was a finance vice-chair of President Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee. He has raised more than $2.8 million for the RNC and a Trump joint fundraising committee so far this cycle, including $2.5 million in the first quarter of 2020 alone, according to FEC filings. Miller’s firm also employs Jonathan Hiller, the former director of legislative affairs for Vice President Mike Pence, and Ashley Gunn, Trump’s former director of cabinet affairs.

Did I mention I knew it.

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