Billionaires Gained Over $1 TRILLION During Pandemic & FEDs Fight Inflation With High Interest Rates

Billionaires have added a staggering $1.7 TRILLION dollars to their wealth since the pandemic began, while Americans are being crippled by rising prices. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Plus, inflation is still out of control, and the Biden administration is raising interest rates to fight it. But is this the smartest move right now? Mike Papantonio is joined by attorney Michael Bixby to discuss.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Billionaires have added a staggering $1.7 trillion to their wealth since the pandemic began, while Americans are being crippled by rising prices. You know, I looked at this story, I love, you know, Truthout they do a great job. I didn't get the connection here about, okay, yeah, people are making trillions of dollars and it somehow has to do with COVID. The two didn't, they didn't fit. I mean, one is yeah, they're making money for a lot of other reasons. Not really COVID. But you raise an issue in, in one of the, in, in the way you, you analyze this. Talk to me about it.

Well, one of the big things that happened at the start of the pandemic obviously is you had a lot of small businesses close their doors. You know, people lock down orders, whatever it is you want to call them, small businesses did have to close down. Most of them thought, okay, two weeks and we're good. But it became longer than that. And so Americans needing things had to turn to companies that could deliver it to their homes.

Big box companies.

Exactly.

And delivery companies.

You know, Amazon already had, you know, the market edge on that. Walmart had rolled out their, you know, two day delivery on items just a couple years prior to that. So they were a direct competitor as well. But it became the only people that could stay in business. The only people that could really profit off of this were the big box stores while your local, you know, maybe a little Minimart that you have, that you use a local grocer, they get pushed out of the way. And, and again, the Krogers and the Publix’s as well made bookoo money.

Right.

While at the same time, raising their prices.

Farron, what, what are, what is the money? What, how much we talking about increases in the wealth of these folks?

Well, we've got, you know, overall the 1.7 trillion and the, they did of course here, you know, you've got Bezos went from 113 billion to 150 billion. Bill Gates from 98 billion to 130 billion. The Walton family, they saw their wealth grow by 27%.

Yeah.

So they're at 207 billion.

So I, I think you raised a good issue. When I first looked at this and went, ugh, you know, Truthout you're really trying to force an issue. I think that's at least part of it.

Yeah.

I think it's, I think it's a good answer to what's going on here. It created a, you know, like Bezos, you just described a $40 billion increase. That makes sense when they're delivering it to the peoples houses.

Well, and, and all of this inequality comes at the same time obviously Americans are losing their jobs. They're being furloughed, laid off, whatever it is, their income goes down, their buying power is still down because of inflation and because of price gouging.

Yeah.

While these people are hoarding all of this money. They're not reinvesting it. Right. They're not giving people raises. They're not expanding and saying, well, come work for us.

Yeah.

That's the problem is the wealth inequality.

Well, in other words, the rush, the, the race to the bottom continues even when the bottom was really ugly during the COVID, COVID crisis.

Oh yeah.

Inflation is outta control and the Biden administration is raising interest rates to fight it. But is that the smartest move? Right now to join me I have Michael Bixby, the fire breathing progressive standing in for Farron Cousins this week. Michael, as I look at this case, you have all of the talking heads all over the place about the fact that the Fed should do this and Fed should do that. But there are, there are some, some, some pretty important points that they're making about raising interest rates and how it's potentially gonna bring on a recession.