This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.
While government officials think people should be sitting around worshipping them for throwing the peons $600 in stimulus (which hasn’t even arrived yet), the reality on the ground in the United States is that the government’s decision making, as it relates to Covid, has simply crippled many people’s finances.
Never was this more evident than in a recent WSJ piece that profiled several people the paper had checked in with during the year to see if their finances had recovered.
A couple named Robert Rodriguez and Migdalia Wharton, who were previously out of work and couldn’t pay their bills, “finally started getting unemployment benefits” over the summer before they “both found new jobs”. At both new jobs, they are making less than their pre-Covid jobs. “We don’t want to fall behind. The way things are, it doesn’t look pretty,” they told the WSJ.
Tow-truck driver and Repo Man Eddie Whiteman said during the spring “banks stopped calling him to repossess cars after their owners fell behind on payments” because lenders were “fearful of the optics”. He says his business is running 15% slower than it was last year. “Nobody wants to look like the bad guy, and I get that. But it makes it hard for folks like me,” he said.
Jemison/ WSJ
Single mother Malaysia Jemison was forced to leave her job this summer to care for her daughter. It was as late as September when her unemployment benefits finally kicked in, with back pay. She says that in November, her food stamps stopped coming and that she would like to return to her job – but cannot do so until reliable child care is open again. “It makes me feel like I jump over one hurdle to be met with another hurdle,” she said.
Andy Posner, who runs a non-profit lender, says he has been busy doling out loans between $300 and $1000 since the pandemic hit. Now, he says, those loans are his “main growth driver”. Total loans have quadrupled since the spring, he says, and he has added several dozen employees. He has also expanded into Texas, from Florida, where most of its loan book is located. “A lot of our clients are nervous as hell, but they are at work at least,” he said. “People are scraping by but they are terrified and stressed and at their wit’s end.”
Cassandra Brooks, who runs Little Believer’s Academy Day Car in Raleigh, NC, says that enrollment and revenue have “plunged” and that she has been operating at a loss for most of the year. She says the families of her children have “been in and out of homeless shelters”. She is getting by because a private donor helped some families pay their tuition fees for the year. “I know that was a sign for God telling me to keep taking care of these children,” she said. “It’s hard, but I’m thankful I’ve survived this long.”
Novak/WSJ
Community banker Mike Estes says this year was the “most intense” in his 45 years in the industry. He was supposed to retire this year but instead has stayed on at regional Fisher National Bank in Fisher, Il. to help serve the community. He says that businesses are surviving in the area, thanks to the PPP, and the bank remains liquid. “We’re almost embarrassed to say we’re having a record year,” he concluded.
When I read the headline “IT DOESN’T LOOK PRETTY” I thought the article was regarding Joe Biden’s face.Sorry about that.Perfectly honest mistake.?
Tow-truck driver and Repo Man Eddie Whiteman said during the spring “banks stopped calling him to repossess cars after their owners fell behind on payments” because lenders were “fearful of the optics”.
In my analysis, humanoids with no redeeming social value claimed to be put out of meaningful (fake state make)work by the coronavirus, so received a special, unemployment benefit, for this period.
If I put my money into such a ghetto lending pool, I assume that it is well-collateralized, or I am collecting enough interest to make it profitable, no matter whether “Ebony” honors the agreement.
One foreigner could certainly not read street signs or communicate with me — I can’t read hers. Was in a minor accident on my street, in a current year luxury car. Within 10 days, it was repo’d in rush hour, traffic, downtown.
There was no real optics, if you don’t recognize the people and car involved.
Having done cleanouts, under-the-table security, and with friends in low places, I can tell you, they will take out bad loans and the legal maximum number of delays, in bad faith, without expecting to pay. Where they are not afraid to advertise vacancies to the criminal element, realty signs will appear, cyclically.
Lenders and rentors are insured against these miscreants, by law. The govt pays them to say, yes. They are never allowed to say, no, based on obvious, common sense.
It is extremely interesting how the only the big corporations have been doing good while the small businesses have been getting the shaft.It makes you wonder if this entire phony 19 “pandemic” and it’s resulting economic devastation was planned out to happen exactly this way??
Fortunately a all encompassing systemic collapse of the status quo is well along, mass starvation (to death) should ensue shortly as “food insecurity” is supplanted by wide scale famine and the associated disease. Covid is naught the cause for our current malaise, but rather, a timely and convenient scapegoat (symptom) or indication of far greater dilemma, wrought by the very same (not so clever flunkies) now pushing the covid narrative as a naturally occurring disaster, and the cause of all our current woes. A great culling is underway. I think many of our insoucient Lords and Masters believe they have this ‘cat by the tail’… I would suggest – these so called elites are going to be shocked by the inevitable blowback headed their way; tens of millions of starving peasants and paupers wielding machetes and axes, pitch forks and maul hammers, AK74’s and AR15’s, Rem. model 700’s, and Win model 70’s, and BIC lighters, will make quite an impression on some very deserving ‘elite’ subhuman degenerate scumbags with titles like congressperson, GS12, banker, hedgefunder, et al.
I feel bad for small business. I do not feel sorry for welfare women.