This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Wiseman.

Today we look at the federal response to the shutdown of the economy in the wake of the

coronavirus spending the hour with Robert Brenner who's just published

escalating plunder in New Left Review 123. The punchline is that the COVID-19 bailout or CARES Act not only escalates plunder, it is predation on steroids in a stalled economy in worsening decline.

This plunder, on behalf of the biggest corporations

financial and non-financial, does not help the economy and does too little for the

population. To explain, Robert Brenner joins us for the hour when our program returns in just a moment. This is a

This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Wiseman and very pleased to have Robert Brenner back with us

He's a professor of history at UCLA. He's the author of many books, including the economics of global turbulence, the boom in the bubble, the Brenner debates, merchants and revolution. He's also the executive

producer of this program. Today we're going to get his

analysis of the CARES Act bailout by the bipartisan establishment, an intervention

and a rescue that benefits the top 1% further cementing the rigged

economy for their own benefit in the face of plunging production, employment and profit.

So we're going to get Robert Brenner's analysis.

So as we are in the midst of one of the worst crises ever,

with the stock market falling the fastest and farthest in history.

The credit markets have frozen up and the unemployment rate output and profits have fallen faster and farther than ever before.

Robert Brenner's new article in New Left Review is appropriately called

escalating plunder and it shows how the government, the Federal Reserve, and the two political parties responded to a

collapsing economy with a bailout overall for the

so, he's gonna explain that and put it into context for us. So Robert Brenner, welcome back to Jacobin Radio.

Where did this bailout come from and how did it happen?

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