So there's a lot of small prints. And the devil is all in the small print of the giveaway. And then President Trump has his own half-a-trillion-dollar slush fund that he says he doesn't have to inform a Congress or be subject to any Freedom of Information Law, that he gets to go to his backers in the Republican States.
And even for the money that is going out to states and municipalities, they're left broke.
Imagine New York City and other states. Most states in the United States, and cities, have balanced budget constitutional restrictions. That means they're not allowed to run a deficit.
Now if these states and cities have to pay unemployment insurance, have to pay carrying charges on the schools and public services, and are not getting the sales taxes, not getting the income taxes, from the restaurants and all the businesses that are closed, or from the workers that are laid off, they're going to be left with a huge deficit.
Nothing is done about that. There has been no attempt to save them.
So three months from now, you're going to have broke states, broke municipalities, labor that cannot, whose savings was wiped out.
As I'm sure you've reported on your show, the Federal Reserve says that half of Americans do not have $400 for emergency saving. Well now they're going to be running up thousands of dollars of rent and monthly bills.
So the disaster is about to hit. They will not be bailed out. But no investment, investor, really will lose.
And you've seen last week, the stock market made the largest jump since the depression the largest jump in in 90 years. And that's because Trump says, "The economy is the stock market, and the stock market is the 1 percent."
So from the very beginning, his point of reference for the market and for the economy is the 1 percent. The 99 percent are simply overhead. Industry is an overhead. Agriculture is an overhead. And labor is an overhead, to what really is a financialized economy that is writing the whole bailout.
It's not a bailout it's a huge giveaway that makes them richer than they ever were before.
(10:48)
BEN NORTON: Yeah and Michael, related to that you mentioned that fine print is important. But I also have a kind of bigger question. And I don't really know where exactly these numbers come from.
Officially the bailout is $2 trillion. Many media outlets reported it as effectively $4 trillion. But actually, according to Larry Kudlow who is the director of the US National Economic Council, he's the Trump administration's kind of chief economist Larry Kudlow is now saying that it's actually $6 trillion in total, which is a quarter of all of US GDP.
And that includes $4 trillion in lending power for the Federal Reserve, as well as $2 trillion in the aid package.
So there is discussion of this aid package, but actually the aid package of $2 trillion is actually half the size of the $4 trillion that is given to the Federal Reserve.
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