Mitch McConnell and the Senate left town without considering the COVID-19 economic aid package the House sent them months ago. They have allowed the additional federal unemployment compensation to expire even though many states are experiencing dangerous spikes of COVID-19 cases, keeping businesses shut and consumers at home. Consequently, we are now staring down the barrel of an economic calamity the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. It never had to be this bad. Leadership, sound policies, learning the lessons from history would have prevented both the spreading of the virus and the depth of the economic pain. But just like Trump’s delusional statements about the virus, what we are hearing from the guy in charge of economic policy at the White House is unrealistic happy talk.
Mitch McConnell and the Senate left town without considering the COVID-19 economic aid package the House sent them months ago. They have allowed the additional federal unemployment compensation to expire even though many states are experiencing dangerous spikes of COVID-19 cases, keeping businesses shut and consumers at home. Consequently, we are now staring down the barrel of an economic calamity the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. In a recent Vanity Fair article, entitled, “Wall Street Isn’t Sold on Larry Kudlow’s Economic Delusions,” the author William Cohan writes: “Has Larry Kudlow, Trump’s director of the National Economic Council, finally lost it? That’s a question many people on and off Wall Street have after his seemingly inane, overly optimistic predictions, on national television, about the direction of the U.S. economy.” [more]
