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by alexpetralia 2280 days ago
Hopefully everyone will keep in mind that bailouts should go to the citizenry at large to resurrect demand, not to large multinationals which need to pay off debt they should have never incurred in the first place (and which was spent on high-risk growth projects or shareholder buybacks).

"Take Boeing. The aerospace giant of course wants a $60 billion bailout. Financial problems for this corporation predated the crisis, with the mismanagement that led to the 737 Max as well as defense and space products that don't work (I noted last July a bailout was coming). The corporation paid out $65 billion in stock buybacks and dividends over the last ten years, and it was drawing down credit lines before this crisis hit. It is highly politically connected; the board of the corporation includes Caroline Kennedy, Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein, three Fortune 100 CEOs, a former US Trade Representative, and two Admirals, one of whom is the board’s only engineer. Using the excuse of the coronavirus, Boeing is trying to get the taxpayer to foot the bill for its errors, so it can go back to making more of them."

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/stop-the-coronavirus-corp...

5 comments

Exactly this. This is not a financial crisis, corporations bailout without Demand will do nothing and we’ll have wasted all that money.
Boeing's market cap is $54 billion. They need $60 billion??
someone should start an online petition that prevents any bailouts to Boeing. Is there any official government online portal similar to change.org? hopefully, the politicians may limit the bailout amount if lots of people raise their voice.
Obama had made an official system like change.org, but Trump killed it. He didn't pay any attention to it anyway, and it didn't really have an impact and was also being abused a bit
They will pass whatever corporate bailouts they want, and they don’t even have to worry about mass protests like occupy Wall Street this time because of social distancing. Who knows where this is going... scary times
More than these bailouts, I am worried about rights being suspended. There is already talks about indefinite holding of people and such. And what if the election gets suspended/postponed?

Scary times indeed

How can giving money to people resurrect demand if people aren't buying anything right now?
People aren't buying anything because they don't have any money or they are in fear of not having a paycheck sometime down the road.
There are plenty of people buying plenty of necessities. That being said, if your job is not essential prepare to be laid off and without work for a long time.