ML-Implode News - 'Heads we win, tails you lose': how America's rich have turned pandemic into profit

Never let a good crisis go to waste: as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the world, America's 1% have taken profitable advantage of the old saying. Some of the richest people in the US have been at the front of the queue as the government has handed out trillions of dollars to prop up an economy it shuttered amid the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, the billionaire class has added $308bn to its wealth in four weeks - even as a record 26 million people lost their jobs.
According to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive thinktank, between 18 March and 22 April the wealth of America's plutocrats grew 10.5%. After the last recession, it took over two years for total billionaire wealth to get back to the levels they enjoyed in 2007.
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The billionaire bonanza comes as a flotilla of big businesses, millionaires and billionaires sail through loopholes in a $349bn bailout meant to save hard-hit small businesses. About 150 public companies managed to bag more than $600m in forgivable loans before the funds ran out. Among them was Shake Shack, a company with 6,000 employees valued at $2bn. It has since given the cash back but others have not.

Fisher Island, a members-only location off the coast of Miami where the average income of residents is $2.2m and the beaches are made from imported Bahamian sand, has received $2m in aid.

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The banks that were the largest recipients of bailout cash in the last recession have also done well, raking in $10bn in fees from the government loans, according to an analysis by National Public Radio... [but at the same time,] By 2016 -- seven years after the end of the last recession -- the bottom 90% of households in the US had still not recovered from the last downturn while the top 10% had more wealth than they had in 2007.

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'Heads we win, tails you lose': how America's rich have turned pandemic into profit