by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
We’ve been watching Senate Banking Committee hearings for decades. There is typically some level of professional politeness by Senators toward witnesses that are testifying. That didn’t happen yesterday. Both Republicans and Democrats lashed out at Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin for effectively cooking up a deal that put him in charge of $500 billion of taxpayers’ money under the stimulus bill known as the CARES Act and has now left Congress in the dark about how that money is being spent. During the hearing, which was held virtually, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts summed up the situation to Mnuchin like this: “You are boosting your Wall Street buddies and leaving Americans behind.”
The hearing was called to hear from both Mnuchin and Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The CARES Act, irresponsibly, gave Mnuchin control of $500 billion, of which $454 billion was earmarked to go to the Fed to be leveraged into a $4.54 trillion bailout program. Apparently, Democrats were promised the money would go to help Main Street while the actual crafters of the legislation conveniently forgot to put that language in the bill. The bulk of the numerous programs set up by the Fed, which will use CARES Act money to absorb losses, are structured as bailout programs for Wall Street or the fossil fuels industry.