POITICAL SOCIALISTIC CAPITALISM

My Trump derangement syndrome, in which I recently exposed the lunacy of the potential for equity management companies get a share of the bailouts.  I neglected to mention, in all the rationale, why it is a decision that wreaks of political favoritism and economic stupidity.  These equity management companies organize IPO’s, and Bond sales for a fee usually a % of the company in stocks, or in the case of Bond ventures they take Bonds or cash as a fee and thereby have equity in these ventures they organized.  The source of their holdings was omitted from the rant and I apologize.

 So now that the pandemic has taken hold, all the customers and more will be at their door to organize the bond offerings, for almost all state and local entities to get a bite of the loans the government is offering, which will only cover a fraction of the costs incurred.  This new action will more than enhance their income for any loss of business I neglected to mention.  The stocks they obtained have the ability on their own, to get the bailouts and thus those winners and losers are the wager made when they obtained the shares.  They should not be made whole for risks they chose to make, especially since equity management companies will both directly and indirectly benefits from the pandemic.

Enough of my prior rant.  Today it was uncovered by a staff member of congress and  found in public data, that in January and February the U.S. sent to China tons of PPE which was an increase of over 1000% from prior months.  At the same time PPE imports fell 11%.  This is Trump putting America First rah rah rah! PS. The national stockpile of PPE and ventilators are almost depleted.  They also found that the new government contracts just placed for PPE, have a contract delivery date of September and October.

Obama in 2014, warned of the potential of a pandemic in stern terms and how he put in place a task force that was staffed with individuals that monitored every country in the world for the potential of an impending pandemic.  Obama stated a pandemic could happen at any time.  This staff reported to the national security advisor, this task force was disbanded by Trump mid-2019.  Susan Rice, the Obama Security advisor, had her transition team in January 2017 prepared and gave a 69 page briefing on what to do and how to respond to myriad of disaster types and expressly the response to a pandemic. 

The briefing stated that actions such as activating the military through the Defense Production Act; a response that could coordinate a national response to acquire, procure and distribute with favor.  In a War, you don’t want a cheerleader you want a real leader.  After all, the term “Executive” denotes the task of executing, not being on the sidelines cheerleading.  Trump should act like an executive and execute, not cheer.  It is not the responsibility of the states to respond to national disasters.