For Immediate Release: April 15, 2020

Press Contact: Robyn Shapiro, rshapiro@economicliberties.us

Economic Liberties Explains How the CARES Act Empowers Wall Street & Big Business

Releases New Policy Quick Take on the Latest Bailouts

Washington, D.C. – As small businesses struggle to access emergency funding and working people continue to wait for desperately-needed assistance, the American Economic Liberties Project today released “What You Need to Know About the CARES Act Bailouts,” a new policy quick take on corporate power that explains how the CARES Act supercharges big corporations’ and Wall Street’s ability to direct more and more wealth and power to themselves, at the expense of consumers, working people, independent businesses, and communities.

The first in a forthcoming series, Economic Liberties’ “What You Need to Know About the CARES Act Bailouts” answers questions about the bailout provisions of the CARES Act as carried out by the Federal Reserve, and provides guidance to inform future policy advocacy and strategy intended to limit further concentrations of corporate and financial power.

“The CARES Act should have done far more to help workers and small businesses. Instead, the vast majority of its support will be used to bail out large corporations and high-risk investors with few, if any, meaningful strings attached,” said Economic Liberties Executive Director Sarah Miller. “The Act’s $4 trillion of credit for big business and Wall Street is equivalent to a $13,000 loan to every single man, woman, and child in America. That represents a massive, enduring transfer of power and progressives need to be clear-eyed about the economic and social implications for workers, small businesses, communities, and society over the longer term.”

Read “What You Need to Know About the CARES Act Bailouts” here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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Economic Liberties works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. AELP believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.