Stimulus & Bailout Watch Thread

[boutons_deux]

Biden, House Democrats strengthen Obamacare, make it more affordable in COVID-19 relief bill

46% of those who lost coverage at some point in 2020 are still uninsured because of the cost of buying a new plan on the individual market.

providing full subsidies to anyone receiving unemployment benefits to purchase coverage on Healthcare.gov or through the marketplace in their state;

expanding the group of people eligible for federal subsidies by extending them to people earning 400% of the poverty level ($51,040 for a single person, $104,800 for a family of four) to make sure they don't have to spend more than 8.5% of their income on premiums;

expanding subsidy availability on the other end, to people making up to 150% of the federal poverty level ($19,140 for an individual, $39,300 for a family of four)—many of the people in the Medicaid gap;

and for people who want to maintain the coverage they received from their employers,

making COBRA more affordable by subsidizing those premiums at 85%.

would fix a couple of long-standing problems with Obamacare on the "affordability" part:

the subsidy cliff for people definitely still in solid middle-class income who made just too much to qualify for assistance and,

at the other side, helping the people in the Medicaid gap making too much for Medicaid in their states, but too little for the subsidies in the current ACA.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015199

[Winehole23]

against hawks like Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard, the Fed weighed in favor of robust stimulus this week:

In remarks to the Economic Club of New York, Powell argued that America’s actual unemployment rate is not 6.3 percent (as official data suggest) but 10 percent, once classification errors are accounted for; that it will take “continued support from both near-term policy and longer-run investments” to restore maximum employment; and that had the pandemic not intervened, there is “every reason to expect that the labor market could have strengthened even further without causing a worrisome increase in inflation.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021...-stimulus.html

[Winehole23]

Katie Porter live-tweeted the COVID relief bill markup by the Oversight Committee

[Winehole23]

Foreclosure Ban Extended to June – Eviction Ban Unchanged

Pres. Biden signed an Executive Order extending forbearances and banning foreclosures until June 30. However, he did not make changes to the eviction ban ending March 31.

https://www.floridarealtors.org/news-media/news-articles/2021/02/foreclosure-ban-extended-june-eviction-ban-unchanged

[boutons_deux]

Dino Sinema blocked $15 in the relief bill

[boutons_deux]

Unemployment insurance claims rose last weekCongress must act before mid-March, or millions will lose benefits

Another 1.4 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week, including 861,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 516,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).

The 1.4 million who applied for UI last week was an increase of 187,000 from the prior week,

mostly due to an unexpected increase in PUA—the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.

The surge in PUA was due entirely to large increase in PUA claims in Ohio, which may be tied to fraudulent filings in the state.

The four-week moving average of total initial claims rose by 21,000.

Last week was the 48th straight week total initial claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession.

https://www.epi.org/blog/unemploymen...lose-benefits/

[Winehole23]

48 straight weeks of job losses. Biden inherited a depression.

[Winehole23]

TBTF airlines

As with half of the March subsides, this was packaged as “payroll support.” 38,000 staff who had been laid off in October when the March subsides expired were rehired through March 2021 even though there was no work for any of them to do. While some of this money ended up in the pockets of United pilots, the claim that the central objective of these subsidies was unemployment reduction isn’t credible. It requires believing that the same Congress that was fighting tooth and nail to prevent relief for other individuals from exceeding $600 were willing to pay $400,000 per person to keep a narrow set of airline employees employed for just four months.


As discussed previously in this series, the industry’s primary objective throughout the pandemic has been to preserve the value of equity and the ownership/senior management status quo. Over 100% of the Legacy carriers’ (AA/UA/DL) year end liquidity comes from the subsidies and funds raised from capital markets after the Congressional subsidies signaled that these airlines were Too Big To Fail.

Without these subsidies, these carriers would not have been able to sustain operations and equity-holders would have been wiped out. “Saving jobs” was a PR smokescreen. The Congressional subsidies were designed to ensure that existing shareholders received 100% of the gains from any post-pandemic equity appreciation, and that the taxpayers who made it possible got none.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021...n-in-2020.html

[Winehole23]

Industry insiders are finally beginning to recognize the powerful linkage between border closures and the collapse of business travel. As one observer noted, “the countries that have been really good at suppressing the virus have done it by killing international aviation.” [5] Thus the industry’s recovery cannot begin until the spread of the virus had been so widely suppressed that businesses could start to reconsider travel bans and governments could end border closures without fears of triggering new case load es.

[boutons_deux]

Commercial MBS were predicted last year to go s up in 2021, with 2020 being 2008 and 2021 being 2009, All Over Again.

Lots of press about companies shedding massive office space permanently as they try to let employees work remotely, which means massive loss of income to landlords.

Ladies are selling their eggs to Pay For college debt, probably other stuff sold, for men and women, like blood and semen.

Debt slavery, the vampire-squid Capitalistic Way of Life, which Americans have been brain-washed, indoctrinated by oligarchy as the superior and ONLY way to organize society.

[Winehole23]

consolidation, financial engineering and value extraction is the future of the airlines.

Industry productivity has been declining for 20 years, especially in domestic markets and for the legacy carriers. In the current crisis the industry has categorically ruled out any of the restructuring efforts used in the past to fix the problems that created crises and to liquidate the least compe ive capacity.


Instead of responding to crises with efficiency-enhancing innovations, 21stcentury industry financial improvements have come from predatory value extraction, especially from exploiting the artificial market power over consumers, employees and suppliers made possible by extreme levels of industry concentration. [8] Innovation and compe ion is hard, mergers and price increases and lobbying to protect the ownership/management status quo are much easier. Returns to airline investors come from reducing the contribution of the industry to the overall economy.


Even though the industry recovery has yet to begin, it is important to understand why it will inevitably focus on further reductions in compe ion and other forms of increased predatory value extraction. As KLM CEO Pieter Elbers pointed out months ago, “every big crisis in the industry so far has led to further consolidation. After pure crisis management is behind us, somewhere in the middle of next year, there is going to be a stage when consolidation and further collaboration in the industry will take place.” [9]

[boutons_deux]

consolidation, financial engineering and value extraction is the future of the airlines.

Predatory, extractive, vampire-squid rentier Capitalism.

There is no escape from its wealth-sucking tentacles.

The Capitalist oligarchy owns and rigs legislatures and the judiciary

The Capitalist oligarchy has and will continue to exploit the social unrest arising from many desperate 10Ms (democracy and Capitalism failed them all) with no financial security or future, in its strategy to takeover the totality of the US govt.

Americans (non-oligarchy) are ed and un able.

[Winehole23]

Commercial MBS were predicted last year to go s up in 2021, with 2020 being 2008 and 2021 being 2009, All Over Again.

Lots of press about companies shedding massive office space permanently as they try to let employees work remotely, which means massive loss of income to landlords.

Ladies are selling their eggs to Pay For college debt, probably other stuff sold, for men and women, like blood and semen.

Debt slavery, the vampire-squid Capitalistic Way of Life, which Americans have been brain-washed, indoctrinated by oligarchy as the superior and ONLY way to organize society.

Who's predicting MBSs will blow up?

[boutons_deux]

[Trill Clinton]

S

[johnsmith]

S

How does a dude that dumb end up in charge of anyone?

[Dirks_Finale]

S

Haven't watched it...probably some B.S. scripted in order to get views.

But cancel culture bad now?

[ChumpDumper]

Haven't watched it...probably some B.S. scripted in order to get views.

But cancel culture bad now?

you guys are canceling speakers at CPAC because you don't believe in free speech.

[Winehole23]

Young Pharoah, whoever that is.

[Trill Clinton]

Haven't watched it...probably some B.S. scripted in order to get views.

But cancel culture bad now?

Ya'll cancelled Disney

[boutons_deux]

Who's predicting MBSs will blow up?

last year I read C-MBS would go toxic due to 1000s of SMBs going s up,

then add in 2021 how BigCorp is shedding office space because the pandemic showed them that employees could work from home.

search "commercial mbs at risk"

[Winehole23]

[Winehole23]

last year I read C-MBS would go toxic due to 1000s of SMBs going s up,

then add in 2021 how BigCorp is shedding office space because the pandemic showed them that employees could work from home.

search "commercial mbs at risk"

old scuttlebutt, huh?

I'll leave you to follow up on that hot tip!

[boutons_deux]

National Observer email --


American, Southwest tally employee losses

American Airlines Group Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. together lost about 35,300 employees last year as the pandemic choked off much of the air-travel industry.

The companies, both based in North Texas, disclosed their employee losses in regulatory filings.

A combination of voluntary employee separations and retirements contributed to the reductions, spokespeople from both companies said.

According to the regulatory filings, American's headcount went from 133,700 at the end of 2019 to 102,700 at the end of last year, for a loss of 31,000 employees, or 23% of staff.

Southwest's headcount during the same period went from 60,800 to 56,500, for a loss of 4,300 employees, or 7%.

The cuts could have been deeper, but airlines across the country agreed not to conduct furloughs or layoffs in exchange for federal financial aid to the industry as part of coronavirus relief packages.

[Reck]

They're finally voting on the actual relief bill in the House.