That was the week that was!
- Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont ended his presidential candidacy on Wednesday, concluding a quest for the presidency that elevated him as a standard-bearer of American liberalism, clearing the way for a general election between Joe Biden Jr. and Donald Trump, at a time of national crisis.
- The US saw a surge in covid-19 deaths with a total of more than 8900 deaths from Monday through Friday, and a dubious record number of more than 2000 confirmed deaths on Friday alone.
- With social distancing, lockdowns, work-at-home policies, and the ‘temporary’ closure of many businesses to thwart the spread of the pandemic, more than 16 million people have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment benefits in the past 3 weeks with a total of 6.6 million new claims this week, rivaling the unemployment rates not seen since the great depression of the 1930’s.
- But as Main Street suffered, Wall Street partied. Despite the ever increasing havoc being wreaked upon the economy by covid-19 and the unprecedented number of unemployed, the stock market had it’s greatest week in decades, thanks to the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill and the $4 trillion credit accommodation to the Federal Reserve; corporate welfare and socialism for the wealthy.
- In short, it was a momentous week, one in which we learned that the Fed will do anything – even if it means destroying the dollar completely – to rescue the super rich, while everyone else was getting devastated. And nothing captures the zeitgeist better than the above screen grab courtesy of Justin Horwitz who aptly titled the tweet “Everything that is wrong with America, in one image.”
