[Edward64]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Now you and I have no access to this capital no matter how great our credit is. The Fed is not backing our shit. This is a bailout, subsidy, whatever you want to call it for the wealthiest people on the planet. It is why this is happening as we reach record unemployment and our GDP contracts.

I've got no problems calling this a bailout with the understanding that this bailout requires repayment with interest.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/21/amer...-pandemic.html

Now you can cheer this on as it appears you want to. Yay billionaires! But there is no denying what they are doing. I've posted links to the Fed and you can Google search all this stuff related to corporate bonds and purchasing of ETFs. I'm not going to bust out a HS Econ book for the rest.

I think we are now pivoting to another one of your statements "give billionaires a few trillion in handouts".

Here's a counter to your second link on the CNBC article.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/no...act-2020-05-22

Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies released a report showing a startling statistic: America’s billionaires got $434 billion richer amid the pandemic.

“The surge in billionaire wealth during a global pandemic underscores the grotesque nature of unequal sacrifice,” said Chuck Collins, one of the study’s co-authors.

Billionaire wealth may well be grotesque, but a sensible way of looking at the underlying data would lead to the conclusion that America’s richest individuals lost wealth during the crisis, not gained it.

The study, picked up by media outlets including CNBC and Forbes, examines billionaires’ wealth between March 18 — the rough start date of the pandemic shutdown, when most federal and state economic restrictions were in place — and May 19. It relied on the Forbes’ billionaire list, which itself is built around stock-market performance.
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Think about that in the market context. The pandemic did not start March 18 (nor, of course, had it ended on May 19), and certainly market concerns about the pandemic did not start March 18. Far from it.

A more logical way to think about whether billionaires got richer, or not, is to think about the performance from the Feb. 19 peak in the market, after which more investors began to get concerned by the novel virus. You then get to see who got richer even in the face of the crippling economic blow.
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The real answer is, not many have. MarketWatch ran the numbers from the peak and, in the interest of time, only used the top 50 billionaires. MarketWatch also took the cheat of using the S&P 500 SPX, -0.21% for billionaires with private interests rather than Forbes’ more complex method. (Also, MarketWatch didn’t look at stock purchases during the month.)

Cumulatively, the top 50 billionaires lost $232 billion between the market’s peak and this Tuesday. If the remaining billionaires on the Forbes list lost wealth at the same roughly 12.5% rate that the top 50 experienced, that’s another $200 billion–plus wiped out.

The article does point out Bezos, Walton family, and Gates did get richer but no where close to your statement of "give billionaires a few trillion in handouts". Even your CNBC doesn't say it was that much.

Additionally, there's no "bailout" here for those 3 except by several degrees of separation.

For example - Fed is stabilizing the economy, Fed is (trying) to restore consumer confidence, and these 3 companies (or at least Bezos and Waltons) are providing the goods & services needed in this unique time and therefore are being rewarded for it by their stock/capital appreciation.