'Doomed to fail': Why a $4 trillion bailout couldn't revive the American economy

[Eugene]

Alternate Washington Post headlines:
• U.S. plans to spend more on coronavirus relief than on Afghan war, with much of money going to big companies
• The U.S. coronavirus bailout spent trillions solving the wrong problem

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Source: Washington Post

‘Doomed to fail’: Why a $4 trillion bailout couldn’t revive the American economy

An avalanche of U.S. grants and loans helped the wealthy and companies that laid off workers. Individuals received about one-fifth of the aid.

By Peter Whoriskey, Douglas MacMillan and Jonathan O'Connell
Graphics and design by Youjin Shin and Cece Pascual
Updated Oct. 5 at 12:30 p.m.

The four spending bills that Congress passed earlier this year to address the coronavirus crisis amounted to one of the costliest relief efforts in U.S. history, and the undertaking soon won praise across the political spectrum for its size and speed.

The $4 trillion total of government grants and loans exceeded the cost of 18 years of war in Afghanistan.

“We’re going to win this battle in the very near future,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after the Senate approved the Cares Act, the largest of the four measures.

Six months later, however, the nation’s coronavirus battle is far from won, and if the prodigious relief spending was supposed to target the neediest and move the country beyond the pandemic, much of the money missed the mark.

The legislation bestowed billions in benefits on companies and wealthy individuals largely unscathed by the pandemic, according to a Washington Post analysis, while at the same time allowing special aid for unemployed workers to expire over the summer and leaving some local public health efforts struggling for money to conduct testing and other prevention efforts.

The relief packages amounted to a massive economic Band-Aid for what is fundamentally a health crisis, and much of the relief consisted of economic measures similar to those that have worked in previous recessions. ...

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/coronavirus-bailout-spending/

[Make7]

1. When the CARES Act passed, there were still a lot of unknowns.

How long will it last? How will it effect various industries? Etc.

The biggest failure was not passing more aid BEFORE many of the CARES Act provisions expired at the end of July – and still not passing anything of significance since then.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

2. They're only now figuring that out?

They should have given the money to consumers, who would spend ot in the economy. Instead they simply handed profit to corporations. And now they wonder what went wrong?

[benld74]

3. Failed because of the freaking trickle down shit

[raccoon]

4. Assholes are going to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. Nt