We're just doing a $2.2 trillion emergency relief bill, and it's only the first, and all of it on the credit of our government that's already drowning in debt.
Trump might not mind.
He repeatedly spoke of the US defaulting on its debts during the campaign of 2016, scaring the hell out of economists and lenders.
He might just as well be tempted by the German debt solution of 1923.
A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 Marks by late 1923.
By November 1923, the US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks.
Savings were utterly wiped out. Creditors were crushed. No more nest-egg. Gone.
It's not in the least clear than even we can afford this, though Trump is happy about the part that bails out big investors on the backs of the taxpayers and loathes only the part that bails out workers and small business people.
It seems all too believable that all this debt might within a year or two break the world economy in a way bigger than the Great Depression, assuming much of the world follows us down this path of financing economic inactivity with debt.
On the backs of future generations, as one might say.
And the worst of it would fall on the poorest nations.
And then there are the consequences of lockdowns so far as they are not supported, or not fully supporterd, by government interventions to help those put out of work.
So, yeah, including deaths, lots of deaths.
Deaths by starvation, suicides, crime, and civil disturbances.
Maybe.
Maybe that's what happens to millions living hand to mouth by working like slaves when they are told to stop working for weeks or months in the poorest countries, those least able to cushion the blow by borrowing against their so awfully meager future productivity.
Brazil.
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