COVID relief disproportionately enriched the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations.

Evidence

In 2020, the longest bull market in U.S. history came to a sudden halt due to COVID-19. The Federal Reserve once again stepped in, this time providing loans to nonfinancial corporations for the first time since the 1930s, stabilizing the corporate bond market, which was at risk of collapsing. … Meanwhile, in Congress, over 4 trillion of the 6.2 trillion CARES Act, the vast majority, went to the country’s biggest, wealthiest companies. “The equivalent of two and a half times U.S. annual corporate profits, or about 20 percent of U.S. annual GDP,” Brenner notes, “was authorized to be dispensed without undue surveillance and with no strings attached.” Meanwhile, the four hundred richest Americans increased their wealth by 40 percent, adding $4.5 trillion to their coffers. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 89

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in federal fiscal instruments as conduits; CARES Act corporate largesse pairs with later chapters tracing finance into cultural production. — connects to: Billionaire wealth jumped 27.5 percent during the early pandemic lockdowns — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 523