While America's richest have enjoyed seeing their wealth grow by a trillion dollars since the pandemic hit in March, many economists urge Congress to "use debt, go big, and stay big" with a $three trillion debt-financed stimulus package to increase unemployment benefits and boost fiscal aid to state and local governments, nutrition assistance, and other safety-net expansions, lest we descend into financial ruin.
Perhaps, though, financial ruin is precisely what Mitch McConnell and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin want.
In what appears to be little more than post-election vindictiveness, Mnuchin is cutting off Treasury and Federal Reserve emergency-lending programs, scaling back uncommitted monies he intends to relegate to the General Fund so future Biden-appointed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen must obtain congressional approval to access it.
As Joan McCarter reports for The Daily Kos:
"This will hamstring both Yellen and the Fed in the future. That's in part because it's running out of tools to juice the economy. It can't do anything with interest rates since they're already at zero. It can't give to the people to boost consumer spending. Top economists are pleading with Congress to do just that. More than 125 economists organized by the Economic Security Project have written an open letter to Congress calling for more direct payments to families. Now."
So when the house of cards comes crashing down, as McConnell, Mnuchin, Trump, et. al are engineering it to, it will be at President Joe Biden most Americans will point fingers.
The level of sociopathy is just too incredible to be true.
Yet it is.
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